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THE 



Chuech and Hek Children. 



BY 



WILLIAM BARROWS, D.D. 



Feed my Lambs.' 



*'Ecclesia ab Apostolis traditionem suscepit etiam parvulis baptismum 
dare." — Origex. 

" Hoc ecclesia semper habuit, semper tenuit ; hoc a majoriim fide percepit ; 
hoc usque in tinem perseveranter custodit. . . . Consiietudo matiis ecclesiie 
in baptizandis parvulis nequaquam speranda est, neque ullo modo superflua 
deputanda." — Augustine. 



BOSTON: 
CONGREGATIOXAI^ PUBLISHING SOCIETY, 

CO^^GREGATIOXAIi HOUSE, 






COPYRIGHT, 

CONGREGATIONAL PUBLISHING SOCIETY, 

1875. 

V ^ 



Stereotyped by 

C. J. Peters & Son, 73 Federal Street, 

Boston. 



INTEODUCTOEY NOTE. 



This Treatise has grown out of a necessity. In early pro- 
fessional life the author felt the want of such a discussion of 
the topic of the volume as would cover all related points, since 
a full discussion could alone bring a safe conclusion. Only 
fragments, however, of such a treatment were found, with wide 
omissions. 

The relations of baptism to circumcision, the Christian 
Church as related to the Abrahamic, household baptisms in the 
New Testament, the constitution of the Church of God, infant 
baptism, infant church-membership, infant baptism in the 
early Christian centuries, and sundry other subdivisions, had 
been made the themes of isolated and valuable essays. 

But these could with difficulty be found ; and, when brought 
together, it was seen that they left wide chasms in the facts 
and logic and uses of the subject. This incompleteness in the 
presentation of the topic has been the misfortune of infant 
baptism in the vague notions concerning it, resulting in some 
unpopularity and a growing disuse of it. 

In the forty brief chapters in this volume an attempt is 
made to remedy these difficulties. The work has three pecu- 
liarities. It distinguishes the Church of God from the so-called 
churches of men. It unfolds historically proselyte baptism as 
practised in the times of John the Baptist, showing its vital 
and interpreting connection with the Christian dispensation. 
It gives, as is believed, every passage relating to the subject 
in every Greek and Latin author or council between Augustine 
and St. John. 

iii 



IV INTKODUCTOBY NOTE. 

The original, when extant, has been added in foot-notes, that 
the scholar might here find a complete hand-book of ancient 
authors on this subject, and an end of search, when studying 
the topic historically, and at a distance from libraries. 

Authorities sometimes cited for infant baptism have been 
omitted. Among them are Clemens Komanus, Hermas, the 
council of Eliberis, and the Apostolic Constitutions. It has 
not been thought best to introduce any evidence whose authen- 
ticity or genuineness could be questioned, or that would need 
to be drawn out by an inference, or enforced by an argument. 

This labor of leisure hours has greatly endeared the Church 
to the heart of the writer ; and it has been only a pleasure and 
a joy to unfold the divine method of providing for the Children 
of the Church. 

W. Barrows. 
Beading, Mass., April, 1875. 



OOI^TEIirTS. 



■^ 



CHAPTER I. 

PAGE 

The Church of God a:n^d of the Bible 1 



CHAPTER n. 
When was the Church of God organized? .... 10 

CHAPTER ni. 
The Other Theory 26 

CHAPTER IV. 
The Original Creed of the Church of God ... 37 

CHAPTER Y. 
Who were admitted to the Original Church of God? . 40 

CHAPTER YI. 
The Double Basis of the Church of God ... . .43 

CHAPTER YIL 
Kg Second Church of God 48 

CHAPTER yni. 

Circumcision and Baptism serve the Same End ... 69 

CHAPTER IX. 
A Reformer in Jud^^a . • . 67 



VI CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER X. 
The Baptism of John no No^^lty 71 

CHAPTER XI. 
Jewish Baptisms 80 

CHAPTER XH. 
The Rabbies and Talmuds as Authority . . . . 91 

CHAPTER Xm. 
The Great Coivimand 99 

CHAPTER XIY. 
Objections . . 107 

CHAPTER XY. 
Christ and the CEOiiDREN 125 

CHAPTER XYI. 
The Silence of Christ 131 

CHAPTER XYH. 
The Position of the Apostles 136 

CHAPTER XYin. 
Household Baptisms 142 

CHAPTER XIX. 
Summary of the Biblical Argument ..... 150 

CHAPTER XX. 
The Historical Arguiment opened 154 

CHAPTER XXL 
The Pelagian Controversy, and Infant Baptism . . 162 

CHAPTER XXn. 
Augustine on Infant Baptism 175 



CONTENTS. VU 

CHAPTER XXIII. 
Innocent and Chrysostom 181 

CHAPTER XXIV. 
FouK Councils, and Smicius 187 

CHAPTER XXY. 

Ambrose of Milan, Basil, Gregory Naziazen, and 

Optatus 194: 

/ 

•CHAPTER XXVI. 

An Objection Considered 208 

CHAPTER XXVII. 
The Question before Councils again 216 

CHAPTER XXVIII. 
The Sixty-six Bishops, and Cyprian's Letter to Emus . 221 

CHAPTER XXIX. 
The Testimony of Origen 230 

CHAPTER XXX. 
Tertullian 237 

CHAPTER XXXI. 
Iren^us: "regenerated unto God" 244 

CHAPTER XXXII. 
Historic Silence . . ... . . . . . .257 

CHAPTER XXXIII. 
Historic Silence of the Jews 273 

CHAPTER XXXIV. 
Summary of the Historical Argument 276 

CHAPTER XXXV. 
The Relations of Baptized Children to the Church 282 



Vm CONTENTS. 

CHAPTEH XXXYI. 
The Position of Baptized Children in the Church . . 297 

CHAPTER XXXVn. 
The Neglect of Baptized Children by the Church . . 301 

CHAPTER XXXYIII. 
What can the Church do for Her Children? . . . 313 

CHAPTER XXXIX. 
The Ancient Treatment of Baptized Children . . . 318 

CHAPTER XL. 
To and For and About Parents. — Conclusion ... 330 



THE CHUECH AND HEE CHILDEEN. 



CHAPTER I. 

THE CHUECH OF GOD AKD OF THE BIBLE. 

THE Churcli of God is very old. At the first, 
the human family was wholly on the side of 
God, and so no distinct organization was needed to 
mark his friends. But this period was one of sad 
brevity. In Adam all died ; and the race in rebel- 
lion went out from under the divine government, 
so far as a disloyal purpose and overt acts could 
carry them. " Professing themselves to be wise, they 
became fools.'' Yet God was not wholly without 
friends and witnesses in any of those earlier days of 
the revolt. The grace implied in that first Messi- 
anic promise to our apostate parents — a promise no 
doubt greatly amplified and expounded and made 
practical at the time, and continuously afterward, by 
those who received it — wrought effectually in many 
hearts through the Holy Ghost, regenerating and 
producing faith in Christ and a holy walk with God, 
'' By faith [in this promise] Abel offered unto God 



2 THE CHUECH AND HER CHILDREN. 

a more excellent sacrifice tlian Cain," having come 
to a good perception and acceptance of "Him who in 
the fulness of time should bruise the serpent's head. 
Enoch also walked with God, and obtained honora- 
ble mention among .those who were saved by faith. 
So was it with Noah, Abraham, and the other patri- 
archs. At length these friends of God came to be 
an organization or body, wdth central principles and 
visible outlines more or less distinct, and with a 
power of continuance from age to age. 

For this body the Lord Jesus Christ is " Head over 
all things; " and he is made to show this in every age, 
with a distinctness greater or less, proportioned to 
the doctrinal understanding and to the spirituality 
of the body of that age. This headship pertains to 
him, as having the world under liis charge in his 
labors of redemption, in the w^orking-out of which, 
this body is the visible centre of labor and fruit and 
hope. This body constitutes the party in this world, 
nominal or actual, on the side of God, and in dis- 
tinction from those who, as the only other party, 
adopt systems of pagan and false religions, or w^ho 
confessedly reject the divine system without adopt- 
ing any other. 

This organization or bodj^, as the loyal party for 
God in a revolted province, is known by various 
names and titles in the Old Testament, as "- The 
congregation," '' My chosen," '' The children of 
Jacob," '' The holy seed," '' The people of the God 
of Abraham," " The assembly of the people of 
God," '' A special people," '' The generation of the 
righteous," "• His seed." 



THE CHURCH OF GOD AND OF THE BIBLE. 3 

When we come into the New Testament, we find 
the same variety and definiteness of expression to 
point ont a people specially called and devoted to 
God ; and, as Knapp well remarks, " All the terms 
used to designate the Israelites as the peculiar and 
favorite peof)le of God are transferred to Christians 
in the New Testament." ^ 

It will be necessary to give but a few of these 
titles. " The Church : " this is the Uyclrjaia of the 
Septuagint and of the Greek New Testament, and 
is the rendering of the Hebrew kah-hal^ Snp an 
assemblj^ So the dying Stej)hen speaks of '' the 
Church in the wilderness," meaning the body of God's 
ancient people on the way from Egypt to Canaan. 
*' Christ loved the Church, and gave himself for it, 
. . . that he might present it to himself a glorious 
Church." '' God hath set some in the Church, 
first apostles," &c. '' And the Lord added to 
the Church daily." '' As for Saul, he made havoc 
of the Church." '' Give none offence, neither to the 
Jews, nor to the Gentiles, nor to the Church of 
God." ''If he shall neglect to hear them, tell it 
unto the Church." In two instances the word 
*' synagogue " is used to express the assembly of 
God's peoj)le.^ 

We have also such expressions as " The kingdom 
of heaven," '' The kingdom of God," '' The body of 
Christ," ''The temple of God," "The house of 
God." The phrase, "The Church of God," 
rjt'A'/lr^aia rov Oeov, is the common rendering in the 

1 Cliris. Theol. p. 470, 2d Am. ed. 2 James ii. 2. Heb. x. 25. 



4 THE CHUBCH AND HER CHILDBEN. 

New-Testament of the Old-Testament phrase, '' The 
congregation of the Lord," nin; ^np.^ 

All these expressions, and many more, refer to one 
and the same thing, — the body of the people of God 
and of the true religion, as distinguished from all 
others. The terms change with translations and 
languages ; but the body they describe remains the 
same, — the confirmed and organized friends of God 
through the ages. 

Nor can it be said that the persons so indicated 
are no more than the secret elect of God, scattered 
along the centuries, unassociated, and known only to 
him ; for they are spoken of as an assembly, a soci- 
ety, having belief, experience, and ceremony, that 
both includes and excludes. In apostolic times they 
constituted a body that could be increased, perse- 
cuted, and appealed to. In the times of Christ's 
ministry, and before there was any '*• Christian " 
Church, they constituted a visible, judicial, and exec- 
utive body: " If he shall neglect to hear them, tell 
it unto the Church ; but if he neglect to hear the 
Church, let him be unto thee as a heathen man and 
a publican." 

There was then no " Christian" Church, but only 
'' the Church of God," an organic, limited body, 
and, in the estimation of our Lord, worthy to exer- 
cise spiritual jurisdiction and disciplme. They had 
exercised it for ages preceding, even back as far as 
when there was not as yet even a Jew, but only 
that '^ Church in the wilderness." 

3 Compare Ps. xxii. 22, and Heb. ii. 12, in the Hebr., Sept., and 
Greek. 



THE CHUKCH OF GOD AKD OF THE BIBLE. 5 

The covenant embracing this body had in it the 
plan of salvation, and the offer of it to all the fami- 
lies of the earth. " The scriptnre, foreseeing that 
God wonld justifj^ the heathen throngh faith, preached 
before the gospel unto Abraham, saying. In thee shall 
all nations be blessed."^ Hence there was com- 
mitted to the Church, in those early days, the divine 
records, sacraments, and a ministry, as to-day ; all 
which must pertain to a visible organization, and not 
to the unknown and scattered elect ; for an invisible, 
unknown body cannot have human offices, officers, 
and functions. 

Very many of the prosperous and adverse events 
recorded in the Old Testament derive their character 
and importance from their connection with this or- 
ganization of God's friends. The Messiah is prom- 
ised to it ; is represented as their unseen but coming 
head; and the glow^ing prophecies concerning his 
triumphs have their centre of interest in the welfare 
of this society. 

That the members of this body and the Jew^s 
were not identical, is evident from this fact (not to 
mention others in advance) : that some of their 
prophecies of Zion's enlargement by the ingather- 
ing of the Gentiles were not to be fulfilled — and, in 
fact, are not — till after the Jewish nation is destroy- 
ed. The continuance and enlargement of the ancient 
Zion runs on into a time when it is conceded that there 
is a Church ; and then the ancient and modern interest, 
spiritual, so blend in names and substances and aims 

4 Gal. iii : 8. 
1* 



6 THE CHURCH AND HEE, CHH^DEEN. 

as to show that the two were never but one. The 
total similarity proves identity ; and the effort to make 
the ancient and modern Zion two Churches ends in 
mere questions of development and chronology. 

The phraseology of the New Testament makes it 
evident also that there is one broad, general Church, 
independent of particular times and localities, and 
more comprehensive than the Church at Jerusalem 
or Corinth or Ephesus. Saul persecuted " the 
Church: " the Lord added to " the Church," and set 
officers in " the Church." These specifications can- 
not apply to particular churches, but must refer to 
that general body of God's friends which is not 
confined to time and place. St. Paul says to the 
Corinthians, " God hath set first, apostles, secon- 
darily, prophets," &c., and then adds, " Now ye 
are the body of Christ, his Church." But a body 
is a Avhole : and so that Church at Corinth could 
have been only a fractional part. Those appoint- 
ments were for '' the body of Christ, his Church." 
That is, aside from any local organizations, there is the 
one indivisible, universal Church of God, which has 
these officers and offices, '•' diversities of gifts," '' dif- 
ferences of administrations," "healing," "miracles," 
" prophecy," " tongues," " apostles," " prophets," 
" teachers." 

Of what local Church was St. Peter a member, or 
St. Paul? In which Church did God "set" either 
of them as an apostle ? Not in a Church, but in 
"the Church." When our Saviour says, "Upon 
this rock I will build my Church;" when we are 
told that he is " Head over all things to the Church," 



THE CHURCH OF GOD AND OF THE BIBLE. 7 

and that he " loved the Church, and gave himself for 
it," — we cannot think of any local Church. 

So we find that the New Testament, equally with 
the Old, presents to us the Church of God as one, 
visible, and general. It is the organized body of 
God's friends, with whom he has deposited the divine 
oracles and ordinances, binding the whole together 
with certain truths and ceremonials. Under all dis- 
pensations, it is the central interest in that vast 
movement of the Lord Jesus Christ to establish the 
kingdom of God in this revolted world. What is so 
much the substance of prophecy and promise in the 
Old Testament and the New, and for the accomplish- 
ing of which the government is on his shoulder, has 
for its germ this one visible, universal Church. It is 
the handful of corn in the earth upon the top of the 
mountains, whose fruit shall shake like Lebanon. 
The dominion that is to extend from sea to sea is but 
the triumphant going-forth of him who is ^' Head 
over all things to the Church." Independent of the 
ages, whether patriarchal, prophetic, or apostolic, and 
above all dispensations, as Abrahamic, Jewish, and 
Christian, there is one pre-eminent, leading interest, 
one ever-growing organization, knowing no change, 
except from glory to glory. It is "• the Church of 
God, which he hath purchased with his own blood." 

In such a policy and movement for reconstruction 
in this seceded province, it does not agree with our 
ideas of God, that he should pause midv/ay, adopt a 
new base-line of operations, and leave the old corps 
in his sacramental host to a kind of disbanding. The 
grand army is a unit, and has but one " Captain." 



8 THE CHUECH AND HER CHILDREN". 

The Abrahamic and the Christian divisions are parts 
of one and the same body. Those ancient worthies 
had the same experiences, repentings, trustings, and 
aims that are common to us under a common Saviour. 
They, looking forward, saw Christ's day, and w^ere 
ghid, even as we, looking backward. 

It is a sad thought indeed to entertain, even while 
rejecting it, that their Church became extinct, their 
plans obsolete, and the whole ancient ecclesiastical 
regime a quasi failure. Scripture is better than 
theory. God's thought is one, and his plan ; — it is 
one Redeemer, one foundation for patriarchs and 
apostles, and one '^ Church of God." We are mem- 
bers of the same Church with those "of whom the 
world was not worthy." Their Church records are 
ours ; and their roll of honor in the eleventh chapter 
of the Hebrews is ours, and yet open for names. 

From a very early period we find the Scriptures 
making mention of an assembly, party, congregation, 
or Church, as embracing those Avho professed to be 
on the side of God. It shows itself as a visible, 
catholic society, receiving, preserving, and profes- 
sedly following the oracles of God as a rule of reli- 
gious faith and life, and as having also the ordinances 
of God in things sacred. This body the Old and 
New Testaments set forth as one and the same. As 
we find it in our day an ancient institution, so the 
apostles found it in their day. It preceded them ; and 
they were born into its ordinances, teachings, and 
privileges. Tlie writers of the New Testament speak 
of it as existing of old, and not ^originating with 
them or in their time, in the same way as the writers 



THE CHURCH OF GOD AND OF THE BIBLE. 9 

of our day refer to it. Opening the Bible anywhere 
this side the middle of its first book, we find the 
existence and organization of this society assumed 
and referred to as a great religious fact. We read 
on ; and this fact accompanies us as a living, augment- 
ing reality, full of vitality and hope and prophecy, 
even as a person. It looks down the centuries, as 
along the road of its anticipated journey. It walks 
on unwearied between the two rows of Israel's and 
Judah's kings, passing prophets here and there. It is 
the Hamlet in the sacred drama of the Old Testa- 
ment. Malachi drops the curtain ; and John of the 
wilderness lifts it again ; and it is the same Hamlet in 
the New-Testament drama. 



CHAPTER II. 

WHEN WAS THE CHUBCH OF GOD OEGAKIZED ? 

"TT~rHEN did tliia body receive an organic and 
VV visible form? Many interesting questions 
pertaining to the nature and constitution of the 
Church of God are involved in this inquiry. The 
prophets and patriarchs have membership in it, and 
administer to it : the house of Aaron and of Levi 
were set apart for it when it was '' the Church in the 
wilderness." We go back of that coming-up of a 
nation out of Egypt, even to the time before the Jews 
had a nationality, or any man was called a Jew ; and 
we find this society of God's friends with its outlines 
of faith, ordinances, and worship. We trace it dis- 
tinctly to the times and to the family of Abraham. 
Beyond him the search is vain for any organic man- 
ifestation of it. Before his time, indeed, there is to 
be found scattered material for a visible organization, 
but only as in frontier settlements there is sometimes 
material for constituting a territory, before any Con- 
gressional act is passed enabling them to* organize. 

A constitution for the Church could, of course, be 
formed only by the Founder and Head, since the 
organization is divine. It was for him to prescribe 
the faith, forms of admission, ordinances, and the 

10 



WHEN WAS THE CHUUCH OF GOD ORGANIZED? 11 

embracing border, that should characterize the union 
of his professed friends. As the visible organization 
of the Church must be of God, and cannot exist with- 
out a covenant, we must ascertain what God's cove- 
nant is, if we would organize under it. Otherwise, 
though we may form religious associations, we should 
not have a Church. Men may covenant to live and 
w^alk together for spiritual purposes; but such a body 
is no Church, unless God has been made a party to 
the organization by the adoption of his plan for the 
Church. Like the pattern of the tabernacle, it must 
come from the mount, and be faithfully followed, no 
one adding^ to it or taking^ from it. 

It is possible that the liberty men have taken in form- 
ing local and independent " churches," so called, with 
human limitations and specifications, may confuse us 
in our attempts to discover the few and simple outlines 
of the original '' Church of God." In the taberna- 
cle that man has pitched, in distinction from " the true 
tabernacle, which the Lord pitched," we may possi- 
bly have been accustomed to some variations from 
the ten curtains of fine-twined linen, with their loops 
of blue, and taches of gold and of brass, and the boards 
of shittim-wood, with their tenons and silver sockets. 
We may have wrought in other beautiful fancy 
sketches than the appointed cherubims of cunning 
w^ork. 

In looking for the constitution of God's Church, 
somewhere between the Exodus and the Deluge, we 
must not expect to find for a creed basis " The 
Thirty-nine Articles," nor '^ The Westminster Assem- 
bly's Shorter Catechism," nor yet any well-arranged 



12 THE CHUECH AND HER CHILDREN. 

" Articles of Faith and Covenant," more modern and 
minute, with ^' By-Laws and Regulations " and '' A 
List of Officers and Members." We must not pre- 
sume on finding parchment rolls, and volumes of at- 
tested '•'• Church Records," unfolding the '' Doings of 
Council," and some quarrels and conferences, with 
tables of admissions, deaths, and removals, ordinations 
and contributions, that any scribe of the Abra- 
hamic or Mosaic dispensation could overhaul, tabu- 
hite, and publish. Very much that pertains to the 
Church of man we must not expect to see when we 
find the Church of God. 

When, where, and with whom did God first consti- 
tute a visible and ecclesiastical union of his professed 
friends ? The New Testament points us at once to 
Abraham, "- who is the father of us all," '' the father 
of all them that believe." 

Abraham had a piety pre-eminent for his age or 
for any age. Existing, yet degenerating, in his ances- 
try, it was revived in him ; and that God might keep 
it pure, and constitute a fountain to gladden the 
nations, he isolated the family of Abraham, separat- 
ing him from his country and kindred and father's 
house. While this separation was taking place, and 
before God had made any spiritual promise to Abra- 
ham, his ordinary piety showed itself with the strong 
characteristics of an apostolic Christian ; for he 
builded his altars at Moreh and Beth-el and Mamre, 
and offered sacrifices t3^pical of Christ. He exercised 
saving faith, seeing Christ's daj^ and rejoicing in it. 
So he received from God justification by faith; and he 
was as truly established on Christ as St. Paul him- 
self. 



WHEN WAS THE CHURCH OF GOD OKGANIZED ? 13 

Moreover, Abraham was a sheik, the head of a 
" house," or '^ family," really a tribe, and so large that 
on the occasion of rescuing Lot he could muster and 
arm '-' trained servants born in his house three hun- 
dred and eighteen." ^ We may well suppose that 
there were many in that wandering nomad village who 
had the same faith with their chief.^ Three hundred 
and^ eighteen men of war from the tribe '' implies a 
following of more than one thousand men, women, 
and children."^ 

So large a population under fair spiritual influences 
would furnish material for a strong Church, especially 
if it is consolidated, immigrating, and colonial, as in 
this case. The material was abundant and good for 
a religious organization and manifestation ; and God 
used the occasion. 

Perhaps some have thought lightly of the Abra- 
hamic covenant and the institution it sealed, as if 
made with one man only, and personal to Abraham ; 
but we see that he was a representative man, and the 
covenant is with a people rather than a person. He 
"pleased God;" and we are warranted in presuming 
that he was a religious index, as well as sheik, of the 
tribe, and that the body of the people went cordially 
into these sacred relations. 

God entered into a tivofold covenant with Abra- 
ham. Here it is pertinent to remark, that many have 
confounded the two parts of this covenant, and con- 

1 Gen. xiv. 14. 

2 Abram had trained them in spiritual things, in the ser^dce of 
God, as well as in fidelity to himself. See chap, xviii. 19, and xxiv. 
12-49, and Wordsworth, in Lange, in loco. 

3 Murx^hy's Genesis. 

2 



14 THE CHUECH AKD HER CHILDBEN. 

fused the worldly and spiritual interests in it, as if it 
were only one covenant made at one time. By so 
doing they have obscured the foundations of the 
Church in the foundations of a nation ; and, by an 
anachronism of over four hundred years, they have 
made the Church a part of Judaism. Tiien, logically 
from these erroneous premises, they sweep away the 
Abrahamic Ciiurch with the Jewish civil code and Mo- 
saic ritual, in the breaking-up of the nation. So they 
create a necessity for a new Church with the opening 
of what is only a new dispensation of the old Church, 
at the day of the apostolic Pentecost. Let us dis- 
criminate between the two elements, in what is 
called one covenant, separated in time by twenty- 
three years, and define each : so shall we see that 
one gave the Church and the other a nation to the 
world. 

Abraham had piety, but no children. God loved 
him as a child, and so purposed to give him posterity 
and a settlement, as to a family in whom he delighted 
above all the families of the earth. So the Lord said 
to Abraham, — 

" Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kin- 
dred, and from thy father's house, unto a land that I 
will show thee : and I will make of thee a great na- 
tion, and I will bless thee, and make thy name great ; 
and thou shalt be a blessing : and I will bless them 
that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee : and 
in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed." * 

So Abraham left Haran, and came, a childless old 
man and a stranger, into the land of Canaan. Then 

4 Gen. xii. 1-3. 



WHEN WAS THE CHXJECH OF GOD ORGANIZED? 15 

God appeared the second time to him, and said, 
"Unto thy seed will I give this land."^ After a 
change of residence, and a temporary flight to Egypt 
because of famine, and a return to Canaan, we find 
Abraham '' very rich in cattle, in silver, and in gold." 
Lot, his nephew, had also '' flocks and herds and tents." 
The business and wealth of the two being nomadic, 
they could not profitably dwell together. The separa- 
tion was of the Lord, and placed Abraham within his 
own promised land. Then the Lord said to him the 
third time: "Lift up now thine eyes, and look from 
the place where thou art northward, and southward, 
and eastward, and westward : for all the land which 
thou seest, to thee will I give it, and to thy seed for- 
ever ; and I will malie thy seed as the dust of the 
earth : so that if a man can number the dust of the 
earth, then shall thy seed also be numbered. Arise, 
walk through the land in the length of it and in the 
breadth of it ; for I will give it unto thee." ^ 

All this, the third promise of the same thing, dur- 
ing an interval of four or five years, is worldly, na- 
tional, and temporal : it is no further connected with 
religion and tlie interests of God's spiritual kingdom 
than in the general verification of the principle that 
" godliness is profitable unto all things, having prom- 
ise of the life that now is." 

It is true, a rich spiritual element was infused into 
this divinely-constituted nation ; and a kind of antici- 
pation pervaded it of another body that God was 
about to form. Though the first organization under 
the Abrahamic covenant was worldly and temporal, 

5 Gen. xii. 7. ® Gen. xiii. 14-17. 



16 THE CHURCH AND HER CHH^DREN. 

it was designed to be such that men beholding it 
could say, " Blessed is the nation whose God is the 
Lord." It was a fitting preface to the great ecclesias- 
tical work that God was about to inaug^urate. 

Some years afterward, Abraham being j^et childless, 
and, as we may well snppose, thoughtful about the 
great promise of God, the Lord appeared to him the 
fourth time, and said, — 

" Fear not, Abram : I am thy shield, and thy ex- 
ceeding great reward." "- And he brought him forth 
abroad, and said. Look now toward heaven, and tell 
the stars, if thou be able to number them : and he 
said unto him. So shall thy seed be. And he be- 
lieved in the Lord ; and he counted it to him for 
righteousness." 

In this fourth interview with Abraham, God not 
only renewed his promise, but he sealed it with the 
peculiar ceremonials of a covenant. '' In the same 
day the Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying, 
Unto thy seed have I given this land, from the river 
of Egj^pt unto the great river, the river Euphrates." 
In the night-watches of Abraham, between the 
divided bodies of the sacrifices, the covenant was 
sealed.'^ 

" The ceremonial of the covenant of old consisted 
in the contracting parties passing between the dead 
animals, with the imprecation, that, in case of a breach 
in the covenant, it might be done to them as to those 
animals."^ 

We note here that the narrative from this point 

7 Gen. XV. 8 Lan^^e, in loco. 



WHEK WAS THE CnURCEI OF GOD ORGANIZED? 17 

assumes the past tense, and declares the matter so 
long in question as finished. '' In that same day the 
Lord made a covenant," a binding and solemn con- 
clusion.^ When, in the vision, under the '' horror of 
great darkness, " '' a burning lamp passed between 
those pieces " of the halved victims, as a symbol of 
God, he ratified on his part the covenant with Abram. 
He then phmted in promise the Jewish nation, and set 
tlie bounds of their habitation. He made the covenant 
to do this with a godly man, and because he was godly ; 
but the arrangement had not a directly spiritual char- 
acter and scope. It was national, civil, and geograph- 
ical, yet spiritualized and interpenetrated^ b}^ a reli- 
gious element, as every nation should be ; and the com- 
forting addition is made to the promise, that blessings 
shall come on other nations through this one that God 
is now foundins: in Abram. '' In thee shall all fami- 
lies of the earth be blessed." As a pioneer in letters, 
civilization, the arts, commerce, and a pure religion, 
the Jewish nation proved this to be true. So the 
first part of the Abrahamic Covenant," so called, was 
framed and assented unto by a sacrificial pledge. " In 
that instant the covenant was solemnly completed. 
Its primary form of benefit is the grant of the 
promised land, with the extensive boundaries of 
Eg5^pt and the Euphrates." ^^ 

We pass now to consider the second part of this 
covenant. From the time of the opening proposals 
of the first to those of the second part, is about 

9 '^ 3f?j covenant wMcli I have already purposed and formally 
closed." — McEPHT, Gen. xvii. 2. 

10 Murphy, in loco, 

9.* 



18 THE CHURCH AND HER CHH^DREN. 

twenty-three j^ears. After the ratification of the 
first part, there is an interval of about fifteen years, 
when God appears to Abram with new promises, and 
of spiritual blessings and rehitions. During these 
intervening years the piety of Abram has been suc- 
cessfully tested and developed in worldly prosperity ; 
and now God is ready to take him out of the narrow 
circle of personal and family and mere national 
interests, and connect him with a scheme of univer- 
sal spiritual blessing. And those who have been 
accustomed to reg^ard the Jewish nation and the 
Church of God as beginning at the same time, hav- 
ing the same scope and borders, and breaking up 
together, as practically one and the same body, should 
note carefully the historical facts of this period in 
the documents, and their chronological order and 
spaces of time. It Avill probably appear to such, that 
this second part is of the nature of an appendix, a 
supplement, or codicil. ^^ 

" When Abram was ninety years old and nine, the 
Lord appeared to Abram, and said unto him, I am 
the Almighty God ; walk before me, and be thou per- 
fect ; and I will make my covenant between me and 
thee, and will multiply thee exceedingly. . . . And 
thou shalt be a father of many nations. Neither 
shall thy name any more be called Abram, but thy 
name shall be Abraham ; for a father of many nations 
have I made thee. And I will make thee exceed- 



u *' The present fonn of the covenant is not identical with the 
former. That referred chiefly to the land, this chiefly to the sea. 
That dwelt much on temporal things : this rises to spiritual things.'* 
Mltbphy, in loco. 



WHEN WAS THE CHUECH OF GOD OKGANIZED ? 19 

ing fruitful, and I will make nations of thee, and 
kings shall come out of thee. And I will establish 
my covenant between me and thee, and thy seed 
after thee in their generations, for an everLasting 
covenant, to be a God unto thee, and to thy seed 
after thee. And I will give unto thee, and to thy 
seed after thee, the land wherein thou art a stranger, 
all the land of Canaan, for an everlasting possession ; 
and I will be their God. And God said unto Abra- 
ham, Thou shalt keep my covenant, therefore, thou, 
and thy seed after thee in their generations. This 
is my covenant, which ye shall keep, between me 
and 3^ou and thy seed after thee : Every man-child 
among you shall be circumcised. And ye shall cir- 
cumcise the flesh of your foreskin ; and it shall be a 
token of the covenant betwixt me and you. And he 
that is eight days old shall be circumcised among 
you, every man-child in your generations ; he that 
is born in the house, or bought with money of any 
stranger, which is not of thy seed."^^ 

In this second part of the covenant, there is, quite 
naturally, an allusion to the first, and a re-affirmation 
of it, lest the second might seem to abrogate, super- 
sede, or essentially qualify the first. The second part 
is not an added assurance of personal salvation ; for 
that had been settled many years before, when 
Abram '' believed in the Lord, and he counted it to 
him for righteousness." It is not an addition per- 
taining to the worldly settlement and prosperity of 
Abraham and his family and posterity ; for all those 

12 Gen. xvu. 1-12. 



20 THE CHUllCH AND HER CHILDREN. 

arrangements had been determined and concluded in 
the first part of the covenant, entered into when he 
was more than a score of years younger. 

We mark the first item in the addition in the 
Avords: '' I will make thee a father of manj^ nations." 
St. Paul explains this as meaning that he should be 
'' the father of all them that believe." " The prom- 
ise that he should be the heir of the world was not 
to Abraham or to his seed, through the law, but 
through the righteousness of faith." When any 
nation became a nation of believers, it would be 
counted as the seed of Abraham ; and when many 
nations believed, as the English, the French, the Ger- 
man, the American, he would be '' a fatlier of many 
nations " in the spiritual sense and import of this 
part of the covenant. So St. Paul speaks to the 
Roman Christians of Abraham as '' the father of us 
all." St. Paul had only Jewish blood, while many 
of those Romans had Gentile blood in their veins ; 
and yet the apostle makes it out that they and he 
have one father. This shows conclusively that the 
paternity in the promise is spiritual, and not carnal. 
The '' seed " of Abraham was to be believers. 
" They which are of faith, the same are the children 
of Abraham." 

'' If ye were Abraham's children," says our Saviour 
to those persecuting Jews. He denies that they 
were ; thus affirming that a spiritual seed was con- 
templated in the Abrahamic covenant, and not a 
physical. 

Having promised such a seed to Abraham, so 
spiritual and so extensive, God now promises further 



WHEN WAS THE CHURCH OF GOD ORGANIZED? 21 

''to be a God unto tliee and to thy seed after thee." 
As the seed is spiritual, this piiomise contemplates 
spiritual relations and blessings. It rises above tem- 
poral favors and an earthly Canaan, to confer bless- 
ings that can be conferred and received only within 
the circle of faith. It extends to the children of 
Abraham the privileges that the believing only can 
inherit. This provision surpasses any thing in the 
first part of the covenant as much as the spiritual is 
more than the worldly, and the universal is more 
than the national. 

Again : this second part of the covenant differs from 
and surpasses the first in a specific provision for some 
not of the lineal descendants of Abraham. The first 
.gave Canaan to the natural offspring alone of the 
patriarch ; but the second is more liberal and expan- 
sive. " He that is born in the house or bought with 
money of any stranger, which is not thy seed." If 
any should choose the God and faith and societj^ of 
Abraham, they could be admitted to share in their 
covenant mercies, be they of what nature they may. 
Thus early did God declare that the exclusiveness 
w^itli which he was pleased to surround the Jews 
was national, and not spiritual ; and thus early did he 
provide for that large inflowing of the Gentile world, 
of which prophecy and our own missionary days are 
so full. This clause is a practical denial of the 
theory and somewhat dominant notion that the 
ancient Church was Jewish. So far as the Jews 
made it so in their proud, exclusive, and degenerate 
days, they did it unconstitutionally, and by infraction 
of the charter. To claim, therefore, that the Old- 



22 THE CHUECH AND HEE, CHILDEEN. 

Testament Church was Jewish, and so passed away 
with Judaism, is to ignore its divine charter, and 
indorse the prejudices of Jewish bigotry, by which 
they monopolized universal foundations to provincial 
purposes, and narrowed a divine doorway to the en- 
trance of a single nationality.^^ Nothing but unbe- 
lief has ever been a proper bar to the door of God's 
Church. 

"Not of thy seed." Note here how grace refuses 
limits. Temporal favors can have their bounds: 
" From the river of Egjn^t unto the great river, 
the river Euphrates ; " and they could be confined to 
blood relations : '' Unto thy seed have I given this 
land." But spiritual favors can acknowledge no 
limits of kin or country. " Not of thy seed : " 
grace will have the range of the centuries, and the 
sweep of the earth. '' Not of thy seed : " that is 
the clause in the divine charter of the Church, by 
which we Gentiles come in to be heirs with him 
whom St. Paul calls '^ the heir of the world." The 
first part gave us not even a house-lot in Canaan : the 
second, all that a child of God maj have. 

It remains to notice a fourth point of difference 
between the two parts of the covenant. Each had 
its own peculiar seal. The first was sealed and 



13 «« The kingdom of God ^ras not first founded by Christianity as 
something entirely new; but the original kingdom of God, of which 
the groundwork already existed, was released from its limitation to 
a particular i^eople and its sj-mbolical garb : it was transformed from 
being a sensuous and external economy, to one that was spiritual 
and internal ; and, no longer national, it assumed a form that was 
destined to embrace the whole of mankind." — Xeaxder's Planting 
and Training of the Christian Church, B. YI. c. i. § 9. 



WHEN WAS THE CHURCH OF GOD ORGANIZED? 23 

confirmed by sacrifice, the second by circumcis- 
ion. The civil and real-estate part was ratified to 
Abraham in that "- horror of great darkness " which 
settled over the divided victims. For Abraham had 
said, '' Lord God, whereby shall I know that I shall 
inherit it ? " And he said, " Take me a heifer of three 
years old," &c. '^In that same day the Lord made a 
covenant with Abraham, saying. Unto thy seed have 
I given this land." ^^ 

That sealing of the first part was never to be re- 
peated ; but the other was to be continuous : '' Every 
man-child in your generations shall be circumcised 
among you." Here is a separate seal, and perpetually 
renewable in the successive generations of believers. 
The peculiarities of the rite point distinctly and sin- 
gularly to the consecration of a family, a race, a pos- 
terity. There is a silent declaration in it that God 
would have a '' seed " to serve him. So he is par- 
ticular to say to his servant, that it is not simply a 
seal of a covenant between him and Abraham, but 
'' between me and thee, and thy seed after thee in 
their generations." And except when introduced 
for the first time into a family, as in the case of 
Abraham, the consecration is not optional with the 
subjects. It is an adult and not infantile, a parental 
and not filial obligation, to be discharged in the rite. 
In the apostasy, the race went out as a family, and 
became unclean. Under the restoring system, God 
would bring them back by families. When he found 
true faith with a proper doctrinal and experimental 

14 Gen. XT. 



24 THE CHUECH AND HER CHILDREN. 

basis, as in Abraham, he would require the consecra- 
tion of the parent and the children. He would 
make the family, not the individual, the foundation 
of his earthly kingdom : '' Thee and thy seed." The 
family comes in and goes out on the responsibility of 
adult years. The convert has come to years of dis- 
cretion, and goes in voluntarily, taking with him, 
however, his irresponsible and unchoosing children. 
So he who apostatizes ejects his infant offspring from 
God's earthly kingdom. They have no option, and 
are " cut off." Thus the family in its seed and gen- 
erations becomes again alien from God, as its ancestors 
were. This is family admission and family rejection, 
since the covenant specifies, " thy seed after thee." 
A marked feature of this second seal of the second 
part is the regard it compels to the posterity of the 
believer. While circumcision sealed Abraham's cov- 
enant with God, it sealed his seed in their genera- 
tions. 

This sacred sealing of men, and setting them ajoart 
from a worldly to a divinely-constituted spiritual 
kingdom, was never before distinctly done. It was 
not done at anj^ preceding time with Abraham. Yet 
that God had such a kingdom in the times of the 
prophets and patriarchs, all confess, as also that it 
was a visible organization at the advent of Christ. 
The prophets rejoice in its prosperity, mourn over its 
decline, and glory in its millennial prospects. It is 
the spiritual centre of the Mosaic religious system, 
the Church in the wilderness, and the sacrificing, 
anti-idolatrous body in Egypt. We trace it back as 
a body, organic and manifest, till we come to the 



WHEN WAS THE CHURCH OF GOD ORGANIZED? 25 

system inaugurated by this covenant, and to the so- 
ciety sealed by this rite ; and we can trace it no 
farther. The New Testament, by a great variety of 
allusions, traces it to the same period and source. So 
we think that we find here the beginning of the visi- 
ble Church of God. 

Indeed, if a covenant ecclesiastical was not adopted 
at this time, and a Church-state entered into, what 
was the nature, design, or extent of that second part 
of the Abrahamic compact? It was spiritual and 
not temporal : its embracing line was one of faith 
and not of blood. Its seal was to be repeated from 
age to age, on successive generations, long after the 
promised land was inlierited, and the real-estate 
compact executed. The limits of country assigned to 
those thus covenanted and sealed were not " from the 
river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates," 
but " from sea to sea, and from the river to the ends 
of the earth." Its seal was preserved, and applied to 
Jewish offspring and proselj^tes, till the coming of 
our Lord. It was, then, a rite of initiation to what, 
if not to the Church of God? But if the Church 
of God, then that body first took human form in the 

Abrahamic Covenant. 
3 



CHAPTER III. 



THE OTHEH THEORY. 



THERE is another and an opposing theory as to 
the origin and constitution of the Church of 
God. This theory discards substantially the Old Tes- 
tament as a book of authority on this topic, and leaves 
us with the singular question whether the Old-Testa- 
ment saints were Church-members, or could find a 
Church to join. We shall best state the theory in the 
words of an able exponent and advocate of it.^ 

He is stating the '-'- principles held to be true and 
fundamental by nearly all the Baptists in our land." 
'^ One of these principles is, that the New Testament 
is our ultimate authority in respect to Church order 
and action." ''We are unable to discover in them 
[the Old-Testament Scriptures] any proper model or 
account of a Christian Church." '' The Jewish na- 
tion may indeed have been typical of the spiritual 
Israel or kingdom of Christ, just as the Jewish sac- 
rifices were typical of Christ, the Lamb of God ; but 
it would be as unsafe to infer the organization of a 
Christian Church from the national organization of 
the Israelites, as -it would have been to infer the 

1 Close Comiminion. By Kev. A. Hovey, D.D., professor in 
Newton Theological Seminary. (Bib. Sacra, xix. 133, et seq. ) 
26 



THE OTHEK THEORY. 27 

manner of Christ's death from the manner of slaying 
a lamb by the Jewish high-priest." " Evidently, so 
far as the Bible is concerned, we are remitted to 
Christ and his apostles for light on all questions of 
Church order and action." '' Another of these 
principles is, that the constitution and work of 
Christian Churches are definitely fixed by the New 
Testament." '' To found the Church was the work 
of Christ and his inspired followers." 

Speaking of the converts on the day of Pentecost, 
he says : '' These Christians were baptized ; they 
were under the guidance and teaching of the apos- 
tles ; they met together almost daily for social 
worship ; they provided for their poor with great lib- 
erality ; and they were living in the same city. 
Were they not, then, to all intents and purposes, a 
Christian Church, — a distinct, organized, responsi- 
ble body, prepared to act in concert upon all matters 
of discipline and common interest ? If not, when 
did they become such a body ? A community of 
baptized believers, nnder common instruction, and 
united in worship, — what is that but a Church of 
Christ ? " 

These quotations are a clear and ample statement 
of the other theory as to the origin and constitution 
of the Church. On such a theory and assertion of it 
we remark in several particulars. 

a. It is a violent division of the Bible as a book of 
authorit3^ We glory, as against the Papist, in the 
saying of Chillingworth, '' The Bible, the Bible only, 
is the religion of Protestants." Yet here, in set- 



28 THE CHUBCH AND HER CHILDREN. 

tling a " fundamental principle " for one of the 
Christian denominations, about seven-ninths of the 
whole Bible is practically set aside as authority. 

The question of the beginning, structure, growth, 
and final conquest of the Church in this world is fun- 
damental to God's redemptive economy for man. Im- 
mediately following the need of a Redeemer, Christ 
was promised and manifested ; and pre-eminence Avas 
given to him in this world as '' the Head over all things 
to the Church." This headship, and to a body, he 
maintains conspicuously through the Old-Testament 
history. Why, then, should seven-ninths of the 
records of this " body of Christ " be challenged and 
set aside when we come to inquire into the constitu- 
tion of the body ? The Old Testament is good 
authority for the creed of a Church : why not for a 
constitution ? '' Whatsoever things were written 
aforetime were written for our learning." We so 
divide the Bible on no other question of a funda- 
mental kind ; and so doing it here puts it in the posi- 
tion of a slighted, overshadowed, and divided wit- 
ness. 

In the civic court, impeachment excludes the wit- 
ness totally. His testimony may not be divided, to 
be accepted and rejected as maj^ serve a purpose. 
The Bible is a divine unit among books, though the 
bookbinder put it up in two volumes, or the Bible 
Society issue it in twenty. If going backward one 
chapter from Matthew to Malachi, four hundred 
and fifty years, takes us outside of '' ultimate au- 
thority in respect to Church order," why should not 
the fifteen hundred between Matthew and Moses 



THE OTHER THEORY. 29 

affect fatally the authority of the latter on other 
questions? Can the centuries between the writers, 
or the bookbinding, rule out or grade even any of 
the teaching's of God's one book ? 

b. Was there no Church till New-Testament 
times ? So the theory assumes. '' To found the 
Church was the work of Christ and his inspired 
followers." The context confines this remark to the 
apostolic age. This unchurches all the Old-Testa- 
ment saints. They had spiritual relations to God in 
worship and sacrifice ; but they were in no ecclesi- 
astical state, as the Church was not then founded. 
But what did the martyr Stephen mean by '^ the 
Church in the wilderness " between Egypt and Ca- 
naan? What body did our Lord have in view 
when he said, '' Tell it unto the Church ? " Were 
not Elijah and David and Isaiah and Joseph and 
Mary and John the Baptist, communicants ? Were 
they not professors of religion in such sense and re- 
lations that they would be included to-day in any 
proper invitation to the Lord's table ? Would our 
notion of a Church and our Form of Admission and 
our By-Laws stand in the way of Abraham and 
Moses and Hezekiah and Malachi coming to the 
communion? Would our theory, if they should 
now re-appear, require them to "stand propounded 
two weeks" for admission to '^ our" Church? 

If Samuel should come to one of these modern 
" Churches," with a letter from Eli declaring him to be 
in '' good and regular standing " among God's people, 
would we subject him to an examination, subscription 
to our Confession of Faith, and a public profession of 

3* 



30 THE CHUKCH AND HER CHILDKEN. 

religion ? If all those embraced in the glorious cata 
logue of the eleventh of Hebrews, who ''obtained a 
good report through faith," " of whom the world was 
not worthy," should asl^ to come to our communion, 
would our Church theory and snug conditions compel 
tliem to a public profession of religion ? As we were 
keeping them outside " our " Church, and away from 
"our" communion, debating their admission, what 
would Abraham and Sarah say, Moses, David, and 
Isaiah, of " our Church " ? 

These simple suggestions confront the theory that 
there was no Church of God till apostolic times. 
Of course the Churcli took on a Christian face in the 
opening of Christian times ; but Abraham would 
recognize it as the Church as readily as we would 
recognize a new cast of the American dollar, with a 
few more stars thrown on the face of it. The Church 
is as clearly outlined in the Old Testament as are 
the doctrines of the atonement and of justification 
by faith. If we cannot find " our " Church there, 
perhaps we could find the Church of God. 

c. We find in this theory the same confusing of 
the Church of God with the Jewish nation, that we 
have alluded to elsewhere as a source of many errors. 
" It would be as unsafe to infer the organization of 
a Christian Cliurch from the national organization 
of the Israelites," &c. It is strange that two insti- 
tutions so wide asunder in their commencement, 
nature, constitution, and design, should be confounded 
into one. The promise to found the nation and the 
promise to found the Church were twenty-three 
years apart ; and the executions of the two promises 



THE OTHER THEOBY. 31 

were more than four hundred years apart, — a time 
sufficient, it would seem, to mark the two bodies as 
separate organizations. Either could expire without 
endangering the life of the other, as a society could 
be a separate body from its Church, and a Cliurch from 
its society, and either die without ending the exis- 
tence of the other. The Jewish nation, as a civic 
State, was simply a society or parish for the Church 
of God ; and for more than four hundred years the 
Church lived and prospered without the parish. 
Indeed, the parish it was that ruined the Church, — 
a case not without parallel in later ecclesiastical his- 
tory. 

The Church was four hundred years older than the 
Jewish nation ; yet men speak of the Church as Jew- 
ish and Mosaic, and passing away with the nation. 
The connection of the Church with the nation was 
incidental rather than organic. It was an old and 
independent body when the nation grew up around 
it and secularized it, as a worldly parish will some- 
times wrap itself around a godly Church, and, by its 
formalisms and worldliness, press the life out of it. 

So soop. as the incidental and restraining connec- 
tion between the Church and the nation was broken 
off by a Divine abandonment of the latter, and '' the 
middle wall of partition " was broken down, the 
Church enlarged on every side in the full force of her 
Messianic spirit, and in glorious fulfilment of her 
evangelical prophecies. The Pentecostal ingathering 
of three thousand, whom the Lord added to '^ the 
Church," was but the first sheaf from the great field 
between which and the reapers the worldly Jewish 



32 THE CHUECH AND HER CHDLDEEN". 

nation had been so long standing. St. Peter tells the 
inquiring multitude that " this is that which was 
spoken by Joel the prophet." And to what Church 
were those multitudes added, if not to that ancient 
Church of God, of which Joel was a member, whose 
glory and enlargement he anticipated and predicted ? 
The decline of the nation is the growth of the 
Church ; and if we would understand Abraham and 
the New-Testament references to him and his cove- 
nant, or if we would understand God in his ecclesias- 
tical polity in this world, we must keep a clear dis- 
tinction between the founding and constitution of the 
Jewish nation and of the Church of God. 

d. A Church on the new theory. '' A community 
of baptized believers, under common instruction, and 
united in worship, — what is it but a Church of 
Christ ? " Then, if only the mode of baptism be 
right, why is not the regular prayer-meeting of a 
community a Church ? why not every Young Men's 
Christian Association ? why not a ship's crew, 
where all are Christians, and maintain common wor- 
ship ? Changing '' baptized " to ^' circumcised," why 
not every sja:iagogue ? Is this the body that Christ 
founded? Is this the institution of which prophets 
and apostles said so much, and the centuries and 
nations have heard so much? Is this the insti- 
tution that has crowded and overthrown kingdoms, 
and that, like the stone cut out without hands, is 
to fill the earth ? Is this the organization, towering 
above all others in this world, of whose starting and 
going and glorious ending the Bible is the history, — 
^' the Church of the living God, the pillar and ground 
of the truth?" 



THE OTHER THEORY. 33 

Failing to recognize the grand outlines of a Divine 
structure in the covenant with the father of believers, 
and three-fourths of the Bible not beinof called to aid 
in forming a definition, we have only this for the 
Church of Christ: '^a community of baptized be- 
lievers, under common instruction, and united in 
worship." The definition hicks the presence and 
power of an entire Bible ; it lacks a sweep through 
the centuries commensurate with saving faith and 
grace in Christ ; audit lacks full fellowship with '^ the 
general assembly and Church of the first-born." 

What, then, is the import of that covenant with 
Abraham, according to this opposing theory ? We 
give the germ of an explanation : — 

'^ The locality of Messiah is fixed in a specified 
famih^ Nineteen centuries are yet to transpire be- 
fore his advent upon earth ; but when he does come, 
it is of boundless importance that such evidence 
shall surround him as that it may certainly be known 
that he is the very Christ promised to Abraham. 
Faith in Christ is a primary condition of salvation ; 
but who can believe any proposition, unless its truth 
is sustained by competent evidence ? The measures 
adopted to identify Messiah when he shall appear 
must be such as are complete, and will secure the end 
promptly. This is equally as necessary for the Gen- 
tiles as for the Jews ; since he is alike the Redeemer 
of both, and as much of the former as of the latter. 
To secure fully this end, God made three covenants, 
which mav now be noticed consecutivelv in the 
order of their occurrence." " The first of these was 
that which secured to Abraham and his posterity, 



34 THE CHURCH AND HER CHILDREN. 

as a country, the land of Canaan," to keep them 
from mingling with other nations and so obscuring the 
line of descent. " A second covenant was made with 
Abraham, — the covenant of circumcision . . . twen- 
ty-four years after the original promise. . . . All his 
male offspring were then necessarily distinguished 
from every other people, having this covenant en- 
stamped in their flesh in the beginning of life. Their 
relationship to Abraham, and therefore to the prom- 
ise that Messiah should come of his family, could nev- 
er be disputed. . . . The third covenant, having in 
view the same object with the two preceding, — the 
identification of Messiah, was that of Sinai. ... In 
synopsis it was written upon two tables of stone, which 
Paul called the tables of the covenant. In its en- 
larged form and with its various ordinances it ex- 
tends through Exodus, Leviticus, and Deuteronomy. 
. . . All that was peculiar in these covenants con- 
sisted in their ordinances, ceremonies, and forms, all 
of which were, as we shall see, types of better things 
under the gospel. Their great moral principles were 
alike, and are necessarily the same under every 
covenant." 2 

Here are three stupendous movements : the gift 
of Canaan to the Hebrews and their settlement in it, 
the consecration of a vast nation in their generations 
for two thousand years by circumcision, and the 
giving of the Divine law as set forth in three of the 
larofest books of the Bible. Notice the masfuitude of 
each movement. It is more than four hundred years 

2 Clmstian Review [Baptist], xix. 590 et seq. 



THE OTHER THEORY* 35 

after the promise of Canaan before tlie nation enters 
it. They are about five hundred years in getting full 
possession of it. They occupy it less than three 
hundred, when ten of the twelve tribes are taken 
into a returnless and unknown captivity. The other 
two tribes are saved with labor till the appearance of 
the Messiah. During all these twenty centuries this 
nation is marked, and, according to the statement, 
made distinguishable from all others, by a seal en- 
stamped in the flesh of every male child. -A Divine 
code, civil, moral, social, and religious, is given to 
them, so minute, profound, and universally practical, 
that it has both shaped and given the best elements 
to the lecyislation of all the leading^ nations since the 
da3"s of Sinai. And, excepting the incorporation of 
certain principles of immutable morality in the law, 
these three vast works were performed of God that 
the world might be able to ^' identify Messiah when 
he should come." 

We submit that God is wont to make a point by 
more direct processes. Such an array of measures to 
secure the attendance of witnesses savors too much of 
the complicated and expensive manoeuvres of human 
tribunals. God hath not need to use so extensive and 
expensive a subpoena to secure evidence. The isola- 
tion, the marking, and the personab government of an 
entire nation for two thousand years, as it were putting 
them under bonds and keepers to appear as witnesses, 
at the end of that time, for '' the identification of 
Messiah," has no congruity with God's simple and 
direct way of doing things. We say nothing of the 
exegetical difficulties of such an interpretation of the 
covenants. 



36 THE CHUECH AND HER CHILDREN. 

If, therefore, this explanation is the best that can 
be furnished to set aside the common views of the 
Abrahamic Covenant, further argument would seem 
needless. 

Is it, then, so broad and so laborious a work to 
remove the ancient stones of Zion and prepare the 
ground for a new structure ? Does it cost so much to 
build a denomination ? And, among other documents 
in its corner-stone, may not all the Bible go in? 
And at its communion may not all sit who have seen 
Christ's day and rejoiced, even though some looked 
as far forward to it, as we look backward to it ? No 
human theory must rob us of this joy. 

We are Church-members with the patriarchs and 
prophets. Their Church-roll is ours, folded up in 
the centuries. We sit beside Isaiah at the one un- 
changed communion-table, and hear him say it for 
himself and ourselves too, " He was wounded for our 
transgressions: he was bruised for our iniquities." 



CHAPTER IV. 

THE OEIGINAL CREED OF THE CHURCH OF GOD. 

THE substance of this creed was in two partic- 
ulars : the acknowledgment of God and his 
authority as supreme, and faith in Christ as the 
Messiah. With Abraham it was saving faith in the 
Lord Jesus Christ. While the compact account of 
the organization of the visible Church, given in the 
seventeenth of Genesis, does not mark the faith of 
Abraham so prominently as faitli in Christ, the New 
Testament shows beyond a question that this was his 
faith. The Saviour says, '' Abraham rejoiced to see 
my day; and he saw it, and was glad." ^ In the 
Epistle to the Hebrews it is said that Abraham saw 
the promises of Christ, and was persuaded of them, 
and embraced them.^ The apostle Paul tells the Ga- 
latians that God preached the gospel unto Abraham 
when he said to him, '' In thee shall all nations be 
blessed." ^ In his argument for justification by faith 
alone, running through the entire Epistle to the Eo- 
mans, he introduces the case of Abraham as a remark- 
able illustration of justification and acceptance by faith 
in Christ. So St. Paul says that Abraham is called 

1 John viii. 56. 2 Heb. xi. 13. s Gal. iii. 8. 

4 37 



38 THE CHURCH AND HER CHH^DEEN. 

" the father of all them that believe." * " They which 
are of faith, the same are the children of Abraham."^ 
Of the Galatian Christians, and so by implication of 
all Christians, he says, " If ye be Christ's, then are ye 
Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the promise. ^ 

Here the relationship of any Christian believer in 
the times of the apostles to Abraham is marked as no 
relationship of blood, but of faith in Christ. The 
headship of Abraham to those apostolical Christians 
had the apprehension and saving acceptance of Christ 
as its central idea. So strongly does St. Paul put 
this point, that he discards any one as a child, " Abra- 
ham's seed," even though of his loins and blood, if he 
had not this faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. " Know 
ye, therefore, that they which are of faith, the same 
are the children of Abraham," '^ 

Because they believed in Christ they were Abraham- 
ic children, even though of heathen or Gentile stock. 

All which, and we leave it thus stated in summary, 
shows that Abraham believed in Christ, and so came 
to be called "- the father of all them that believe." 
This faith, as St. Paul argues at length, was the basis 
of his justification, and on which, as a creed-founda- 
tion, God formed his covenant with him. So was it 
the creed-basis of the Church of God. 

In the mind of the believer this article of faith 
w^ould naturally expand and subdivide itself, show- 
ing that it presupposed and implied a consciousness 
of guilt, sorrow for sin, admission of the just con- 
demnation of the law, and a humble looking unto 

4 Kom. iv. 11. 5 Gal. iii. 7. 6 Gal. iii. 29. ^ Gal. iii. 7. 



THE ORIGINAL CREED. 39 

Christ for deliverance. We cannot allow for less 
meaning in those words, " Abraham rejoiced to see 
my day ; and he saw it, and was glad." ^ He was 
one of those who '' died in faith, not having: received 
the promises, but having seen them afar off, and was 
persuaded of them, and embraced them." 

The Christian Church has no broader and no other 
basis than this one Abrahamic article. We have ex- 
pansion and divisions of it, and varied statements, and 
some things added to it in our local creeds for denom- 
inational and other purposes ; but, for substance of 
doctrine, we confess in our Church-membership to the 
same that the father of believers confessed to in his 
Church-membership. 

8 John viii. 56. 



CHAPTER V. 

WHO WERE ADMITTED TO THE ORIGINAL CHURCH 

OF GOD ? 

'T'TT'HEN a father who is an alien comes into the 
V V rights of citizenship, his children under age 
are included in the privileges and duties of that citi- 
zenship : so ordinarily, in important domestic, social, 
and civil compacts, the little children are reckoned 
with the parents. This is natural and reasonable. 
The constitution of the family is such that they must 
be reckoned as an inseparable part of it, and bound 
to the head in any good or ill of any parental com- 
pact. This alone satisfies the parental heart, that in- 
voluntarily binds up the child in its own expected 
good or ill. 

Hence God in his ancient covenants ^invariably 
included the children. The children of Adam were 
so included, and suffer through his sin. God said to 
Noah, '' With thee will I establish my covenant ; " 
and so Noah, "- moved with fear, prepared an ark to 
the savinor of his house." When the ano^els would 
deliver Lot they said, " Arise, take thy wife and thy 
two daughters," and '' escape for thy life." So God 
enjoined obedience on his ancient people, '' that it 
may be well with thee, and with thy children after 

40 



WHO WERE ADMITTED? 41 

thee." Of the children of disobedient parents he 
says, " In the iniquities of their fathers shall they 
pine away." Thus has it ever been that God has re- 
garded the household as a unit. 

In view of this fact of a oneness in the family con- 
stitution, and in view of this practice of God to 
couple and bind up the children with the parents in 
any parental covenant with him, what should we 
expect if God should gather a Church of adult mem- 
bership ? Would there probably be any specific and 
encouraging recognition of the children of the mem- 
bers ? On this point the historj^ of the formation of 
the Church is explicit and plain. ''I will establish 
my covenant between me and thee, and thy seed after 
thee." "He that is born in thy house, and he that 
is bought with thy money, must needs be circumcised." 
For God's covenant constituting the Church required 
that Abraham should receive "the sign of circum- 
cision, a seal of the righteousness of faith w^hich he 
had yet being uncircumcised." ^ So " Abraham 
took Ishmael his son, and all that were born in his 
house, and all that were bought with his money, 
every male among the men of Abraham's house, and 
circumcised them in the selfsame day, as God had 
said unto him."^ This embraced all those to whom 
the believing head of the family sustained the respon- 
sible relation of a father or a guardian. 

So afterward, when a proselyte from the Gentiles 
came into the faith and Church of God's people, he 
" and all his " received this seal. The law regulating 



1 Rom. iv. 11. 2 Gen. xvii. 

4* 



42 THE CHUECH AND HER CHILDREK. 

this run thus, " When a stranger shall sojourn with 
thee, and will keep the passover of the Lord, let all 
his males be circumcised ; and then let him come near 
and keep it. And he shall be as one that is born in 
the land."^ This dedication of the household was a 
pre-requisite to the celebration of the passover. No 
one came to the communion in that ancient Church 
who did not at the same time publicly dedicate and 
make over his family to God. 

The females of the household were included with- 
out any ceremonial dedication, according to that 
patriarchial and Oriental usage which included the 
females of the family, without specification, in cove- 
nants and contracts made to embrace the males. 
The spirit and practice of those times left woman com- 
paratively unmentioned ; yet in all civic, social, and 
religious combinations, and organic actions, she was 
most sacredly embraced and bound up by implication 
and silent consent. 

3 Ex. xiL 48. 



CHAPTER VL 

THE DOUBLE BASIS OF THE CHURCH OF GOD. 

"TXT'E have now unfolded the two fundamental 
VV elements in the divine constitution of the 
Church of God. One is faith in the Messiah : the 
other is household dedication. The adult, entering 
into membership, must believe in a Redeemer for sal- 
vation ; and if he have little children he must dedi- 
cate them to God in the Church ; indeed, he is pre- 
sumed to include them in and with himself, when he 
makes his own dedication. 

In comparison with these two, all other principles 
were inferior. They guided to the entrance and 
bore up the portal to the spiritual house of God. If 
any one will study the formation and history of the 
Church through the Old Testament, he will be sur- 
prised to see how these two features mark the body 
in its inception and development. They lift themselves 
up as do the two continents of the world, what land 
is left being but islands. This ought not to surprise 
any one ; since the doctrine of redemption is the natu- 
ral and germinant centre of true religion, and its 
application most fitly begins with those nearest to us. 
Moreover, a due inculcation of household religion 
binds one over by proper influence and obligation, 

43 



44 THE CHURCH AND HER CHH.DREN. 

and, indeed, is a pledge that he will feel his full 
measure of religious duty beyond ; for he who has 
done what he can for his family religiously has 
developed a spirit and activity that will inevitably 
lead him to do good to all men as he has opportunity. 
Hence we see that these two essentials to primitive 
Church-membership have no greater prominence in 
230sition than they have importance in substance. 
They have a sweep, a compass, an aggregating power. 
They sum up the faith and practice of a profession of 
religion very much as the Saviour sums up the law 
and the prophets in two fundamental positions. 

They, therefore, who ignore the family in the struc- 
ture of the Church, and so much abbreviate the origi- 
nal covenant as to clip off the very significant clause, 
'' and thy seed after thee," make an organic and 
totally subversive change in the constitution of the 
bodj^ They throw out the main element on which 
God depended for making his Church hereditary ; 
and they reduce the original vow of dedication to a 
tithe of its divinely-measured import. The leading 
field of spiritual culture, the family, that was in- 
cluded within the divine fencings of the Church, and 
while within has special promises, and whose cultiva- 
tion was enjoined with Divine commands, is by this 
human reconstruction left outside; its case is left 
more to human judgment and choice ; and the field 
is worked as one from which peculiar and covenanted 
blessings are now discarded. 

According to the original terms of admission to his 
Church, God made the additions by family groups. 
The parent and his children God reckoned as one. 



THE DOUBLE BASIS OF THE CHURCH OF GOD. 45 

He allowed no dividing^ between them when the head 
of the group professed his faith. Not that the chil- 
dren would inevitably become believers savingly, or 
could be made such by the ceremony of admission ; 
but in this requisition God recognized the natural and 
inseparable oneness of the family. So in taking the 
head he would not sever it from the body. He would 
not fracture the unit. Herein God embodies, as in 
all ceremonies of his appointing, a great practical 
truth. The analysis is this : The child, as a moral 
and religious being, is a growth of the household. 
The material, the aliment, for this growth is or may 
be made to be within the familJ^ The passions, pre- 
judices, preferences, and moral traits and religious 
qualities, of the family become the essentials in tlie 
moral stature and manhood of the child. So his char- 
acter is or may be of home manufacture ; and there- 
fore the parents are held to be responsible for it. 

During the minor years, and till this character is 
formed, the child has no separate life for moral 
growth. His life is an unsevered branch of the 
family tree ; and over the future moral and religious 
character of the child the parents exercise a foreor- 
daining power. Ordinarily this is essentially a repro- 
duction of the character of the parents. 

These are truths of Scripture, and of common 
observation and of common sense. Hence infidels 
and corrupt men, in their attempts to overthrow 
Christianity, usually shape their policy to break up 
the family as an institution of Christian society ; and 
hence the ruin of many fair youth in good families 
has begun by w^ithdrawing them from those families, 
and checkino: the force of home influences. 



46 THE CHUECH AND HER CHH^DEEN. 

Viewing the parent and child as thus naturally and 
inseparably connected, as to the material and growth 
of character, God binds over the parent as accounta- 
ble for that coming character. As the germinant, 
forming product is under his shaping hand, and re- 
ceives from him its resources for growth, God exacts 
from him, in the Abrahamic covenant, a pledge that 
the child shall be brought up for him. 

It is just at this point that we may see best the 
natural fitness and moral beauty of household conse- 
cration. In -a profession of religion, and dedication 
of himself to God, the man dedicates all he is and all 
he has to God. But nothing belongs so eminently 
and sacredly and exclusively and inalienably to the 
parent as his child. In the total dedication may he 
keep the child back ? Yet a part of himself morally, 
how can he do it ? In such a dedication it should be 
remarked, in passing, while the full thought is re- 
served for expansion in another place, that in the 
dedication the parent performs only his own duty, 
not the child's. The child must dedicate himself in 
the time and manner of God's claiming. No child's 
duty is performed by the parent; and no child's priv- 
ileg^e is cut off. 

CD 

How fitting, too, the public dedication and seal ! 
His farm, shop, office, worldly goods, and powers he 
dedicates without specification or mark ; but these 
are as nothing to his child. Is that immortal, bearing 
the image of God, worthy of no special offering? 
God marks it as fit for a singular consecration ; and 
so he claims it by a particular service, dignifying the 
child above all the other possessions of the man. 



THE DOUBLE BASIS OF THE CHURCH OF GOD. 47 

It is objected that there is no utility in the public 
pledge and offering of a child. But, while we put 
public officers of very ordinary grade under oath for 
fidelity, is there no power in the solemn covenant 
and oath that one will train that child for God? 
Shall we exact a pledge for trifles, and deny one to 
God, or spurn it as unworthy and useless, in a work 
that takes hold on eternity ? Put this objection in 
the mouth of Abraham when he is called to dedicate 
Isaac : it is as good for Abraham as for one of us. 

It is not till we regard thus the oneness of the family 
in religious sentiment and destiny, that we see the infi- 
nite reasonableness of the divine requisition for house- 
hold consecration. It satisfies the parent who would 
bring his child into the mercy himself is sharing. It 
binds the parent to fidelity in duty by the tenderest 
and strongest bond that God can impose. By such 
dedication also God constitutes his Church, as he did 
in creation the tree yielding fruit, " whose seed was 
in itself after his kind ; and God saw that it was 
good." 



CHAPTER VII. 

NO SECOND CHTJRCH OF GOD. 

AT tbis stage of our inquiries two exceedinglj'' 
interesting questions arise, — whether God has 
ever framed a second Church-constitution or a second 
Church-creed. It will condense thought and econo- 
mize time to answer these two questions at once and 
with one reply. 

It is difficult to make some persons understand 
that the Abrahamic Chiu'cb was any thing more than 
a Jewish Church. They regard it as one of the insti- 
tutions of Judaism, beginning and passing away with 
that system. Two facts conflict with this notion. 
The system of Judaism had its origin in the giving of 
the law, moral and ceremonial, at Sinai ; while the 
Church, according to the chronology of St. Paul, had 
its origin four hundred and thirty years before. "- The 
covenant that was confirmed before of God in Christ 
[in regard to Christ], the law, which was four hun- 
dred and thirty years after, cannot disannul." ^ 

The constitution of the Church was, therefore, a 
foundation laid anterior to the foundations of the 
Jewish nation, and so need not, by any necessity of 

1 Gal. ill. 17. 
48 



NO SECOND CHUBCH OF GOD. 49 

the case, perish with those institutions that were 
Jewish and national. 

Moreover, the foundation for the Church was not 
conterminous with the foundation of the nation in its 
extent or duration. In the constitution of the 
Church God says, '' A father of many nations have 
I made thee." ^ '' In thy seed shall all the nations of 
the earth be blessed." ^ This is no national founda- 
tion, and so not Jewish. The range is wider than 
the Holy Land, and embraces other nations than the 
Jews. What is that '' bringing-in " of the Gentiles, 
of which the prophets are so full, but a glorious ad- 
dition to the Abrahamic Church ? We call Isaiah 
the evangelical prophet, because he is so full of the 
spirit and spreading and triumph of Christianity. 
Was he so exultant over the fall and forgetfulness of 
the old Church of his da)^, and the rise of a new one 
eight hundred years in the future ? 

Addressing himself to the one Church of God, of 
which he was a member, he says, " Gentiles shall 
come to thy light. . . . All they gather themselves 
together: they come to thee. . . . The abundance of 
the sea shall be converted to thee : the forces of the 
Gentiles shall come unto thee. . . . The isles shall 
wait for me, and the ships of Tarshish. . . . They 
shall build the old wastes : they shall raise up the 
former desolations. . . . The Gentiles shall see thy 
righteousness and all kings thy glory. . . . And they 
shall call them the holy people, the redeemed of the 
Lord." 4 



2 Gren. xvii. 5. s Gen. xxii. 18. 4 i^a Ix., Ixi., Ixii. 

5 



60 THE CHCTRCH AND HER CHILDREN. 

So is chapter after chapter through the prophets in 
that glorious foreshadowing of the gospel triumph 
under the spiritual reign of Jesus Christ. 

This is 'no literal regathering of the scattered Jews 
in the old Jerusalem. It is a spiritual gathering 
with the spiritual Zion, the Church of God. It is 
the conquest of Christianity spreading over the earth. 
But the address and promise are to the Church exist- 
ing in the times of Isaiah ; and that was the Abra- 
hamic Church. It is her light that is to shine, her 
border that is to be enlarged, into her covenant and 
sacred enclosure that the Gentiles are to come. She 
is to be purified, enlarged, and to fill the earth. To 
use the figure of the apostle, the Abrahamic Church 
is the original olive-tree, and the Gentiles are to be 
grafts. To all of those whom the prophets foresaw 
as coming in, St. Paul would speak as he did to a 
very small part of them at Ephesus, '-'- Remember 
tliat ye, being in time past Gentiles, were aliens from 
the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers from the 
covenants of promise. Now ye are no more strangers 
and foreigners, but fellow-citizens with the saints, 
and of the household of God." ^ 

Here we find that certain Gentiles were converted 
to God, and then came into a Church on the profession 
of their faith. Is it a new Church in which they 
take membership ? There should have been one 
then and there, if ever ; for St. Paul, who gathered 
and organized that body of believers at Ephesus, was 
a Christian minister ; and those whom he received 

6 Eph. ii. 



NO SECOND CHUECH OF GOD. 61 

into it were converts to Christianity. In the open- 
ing of his labors there he preached in the syna- 
gogue. ^ As a result, many of those devotees of 
Diana believed in Christ ; and, under the directing 
hand of the apostle, tliey became the Church at 
Ephesus. Speaking to these Church-members after- 
ward, he reminds them, that, as heathen, they were 
once aliens and foreigners from the commonwealth of 
Israel, and strangers to God's covenant, but that 
now they are in a family, the household of God 
which is his Church ; and, by a singular combination 
of terms, he goes on to say that it has the common 
foundation of the apostles and prophets. This foun- 
dation of his Churcli underlies both, and is older than 
both. 

Here is no new body : it antedates the era of the 
prophets. The apostle uses here felicitous terms as 
if specially claiming and defending the antiquity of 
the visible embodiment of the friends of God. By a 
common process of spiritual naturalization they have 
obtained citizenship in this ancient confederation of 
God. 

This Ephesian case well illustrates all the earlier 
Christian Church history of the apostolic times. As 
fast as Gentile converts were made, they were builded 
into the old Abrahamic structure. God did not lay 
any other. The original Church of God continued, as 
all agree, to apostolic times ; and then the apostles 
treated the Christian converts as the ingathering of 
the Gentiles, that had been so fully prophesied. 

6 Acts xviii. 19. 



52 THE CHUBCH AND HER CHILDEEN. 

Those converts are taught to embrace and plead the 
promise made to Abraham, and are associated with 
him in their ground of acceptance. They are as 
truly made Church-members as Abraham and his seed ; 
and St. Paul labors his argument to make it clear that 
they are the children of Abraham, whom God in- 
tended by the words of the covenant. Finding this 
body of beUevers constituted on the Abrahamic 
plan, the apostles felt no need of organizing a new 
body. A better creed than the Abrahamic St. Paul 
could not find ; and indeed, in many instances he 
makes it the height of his argument, to bring men up 
to the apprehension and acceptance of the faith of 
Abraham. 

This ancient, solitary, undying Church is the body 
to which our Saviour refers when, speaking of an 
offending brother, he says, " Tell it unto the Church." 
St. Paul refers to the same when he says, '' God 
hath set some in the Church, first apostles, secondarily 
prophets," and when he speaks of Christ as "Head 
over all things to the Church." This body had its 
organization, as a complete and already very ancient 
institution, in the times of our Saviour's ministr}^, and 
in the opening of apostolic labors. It existed before, 
during, and after Judaism. The apostles, as oar 
Saviour, were members of it ; and there is no evi- 
dence that they ever withdrew from it. When did 
St. John or Peter or Paul join the Church? The 
very question dispels a multitude of assumptions, and 
starts a series of questions and suggestions, showing 
in clearest manner the continuity of God's Church, 
Avhile its manifestations and administration were 
changed in some respect. 



NO SECOND CHURCH OF GOD. 53 

The oiily appearance of any thing hke a new organi- 
zation is fonncl in those local bodies called Churches, 
as in Antioch, Corinth, and elsewhere; but there is no 
statement or evidence in the New Testament that these 
were bodies started de novo as ig^norino^ the ancient 
Church. As well might it be claimed that the starting 
of a new synagogue anywhere in the Holy Land, be- 
fore the Christian era, was a discarding of the Jewish 
system that had its centre at Jerusalem. These 
local Churches were but fractions or parts of the one 
Church. For the personal and local convenience of 
a number of believers, separated from their brethren, 
the management of their religious affairs, and the 
adoption and use of their means of grace were left in 
their own hands. They were little religious repub- 
lics, within and parts of the one Church of Christ, 
being to that Church what towns are to a county, or 
counties to a State, or synagogues to the Jewish 
sj^stem of religious worship, whose central service 
and head were at Jerusalem. They were '' branches " 
of the Abrahamic tree, Gentile ''grafts" in the 
original '' olive." Such local organizations sprung 
up in a very natural way, just as usage allowed the 
Jews to form a new synagogue in any village or 
corner inconveniently remote from an}^ already estab- 
lished, and where ten men could be found free from 
daily labor for support. 

Theoretically and prospectively the Church of God 
embraces all the human territor}^ of this world. It 
is by redemption, and is to become by the conquest 
and settlements of grace, the territor}^ of the 
Church ; and Christ is head over all things in it for 
5* 



54 THE CHUECH AND HER CHILDREN. 

the Church. An outline government of the Church 
extends over it, as the constitution and government 
of the United States extend over our vast territory 
Avhere as yet there are no local civil organizations. 
Where there are people enough who wish it, Con- 
gress grants to them the privilege, through an ena- 
bling act, so called, to form a State government. But 
that government must be in harmony with the Con- 
stitution of the United States, and onl}^ an extension 
and local development of the old and general gov- 
ernment. 

So a new Church at Corinth or Canton is but the 
development, in a new place, of the one ancient and 
universal Church of God. It must have more than a 
similarity to it. It must have the same creed basis, 
the same theory of membership : it must have 
identity with it, as a part of one divided whole. If 
it vary from the ancient Church enough to be a new 
bod}^ it is not a Church, but a human organization 
of the religious hind. If it exclude the ordinance 
of baptism, or the Lord's Supper, if it exclude 
females, or minors, or specified race or color or social 
grade, it may be in some respects a very good society, 
but not a Church. God only has constituted a 
Church ; and bodies of men become parts of it by so 
orGfanizingf as to conform to the essential outlines 
that the divine Founder has drawn. " 



7 "The Churcli of Christ is his kiu<^dom: its constitution is 
divine, sacred in its authority, all- wise and perfect in its plan. To 
alter is to injure it; hut it is more: it is to slight God's wisdom, to 
interfere with his reign." — American Baptist Puhllcatlon Society^ 
Tract No. 191. 



NO SECOND CHURCH OF GOD. 55 

One of the very early Church fathers, Cyprian of 
Carthage, speaks so distinctly on the oneness of the 
Church, that his words should be quoted, because, 
born about A.D. 200, he was near in time to the 
apostolic conception of the Church, and formed and 
expressed these views before the times when it be- 
came so much an iuterest fpr sects and theorists to 
discover, if possible, the foundations of a second 
Church of God, or make essential modifications in 
the foundations of the first. 

'' The Church is one, though she be spread abroad, 
and multiplies with the increase of her progeny ; even 
as the sun has rays many, yet one light ; and a tree 
boughs many, yet its strength is one, seated in 
the deep-lodged root ; and as many streams flow 
down from one source, though a multiplicity of waters 
seems to be diffused from the bountifulness of the 
overflowing abundance, unity is preserved in the 
source itself. Part a ray of the sun from its orb, and 
its unity forbids this division of light. Break a branch 
from the tree : once broken it can bud no more. Cut 
the stream from its fountain: the remnant will be 
dried up. Thus the Church, flooded with the light 
of the Lord, puts forth her rays through the whole 
world with yet one light, which is spread upon all 
places, while its unity is not infringed. She stretches 
forth her branches over the universal eartli in the 
robes of plenty, and pours abroad her beautiful and 
onward streams ; yet is there one head, one source, 
one mother, abundant in the results of her fruitful- 
ness."« 

8 Cyprian, Thornton's Translation. Library of the Fathers. Ox- 
ford, 1839. 



56 THE CHUBCH AND HER CHH^DEEK. 

There remains to be produced an independent ar- 
gument in proof of the oneness of the Abrahamic 
and apostolical Church. 

Our Lord used the word " Church " but twice, so far 
as we know : '' Upon this rock I will build my 
Church ; " '^ if he shall neglect to hear them, tell it 
unto the Church." Here is a reference to a body, 
but Avithout any definition or explanation of it. Its 
origin, nature, and constitution are silently passed 
over. Two things only are said of the body : its 
creed-basis is declared to be confession of Christ ; and 
one of its offices is disciplinary. These two things 
are said incidentally, more than for information as 
something new. The allusions of Christ to the Church 
are evidently to a body already existing, recognized, 
and well understood. No new organization, just pro- 
posed or springing up, would be so referred to. As 
we pass along into and through the New Testament, 
the word "- Church" appears as naturallj^ and freely and 
without definition, as the word '' synagogue " or '' Jeri- 
cho "or '^ temple." No novelty, innovation, or obscurity 
seems to pertain to it. Both the name and the insti- 
tution are evidently old and familiar to the disciples 
and apostles, and to their hearers, and to the readers 
of that day. What is the explanation ? A very 
simple one, and for us, in unfolding this topic, full of 
information and suggestion. 

The disciples and the apostles, and the devout of 
their times, had the Septuagint of the Old Testa- 
ment in common use. They quoted from it generally, 
instead of quoting from the original Hebrew : so 
they had become familiar with the word ecclesia. The 



NO SECOND CHURCH OF GOD. 57 

institution itself they were members of, and knew 
well ; and this was the name by which they had be- 
come accustomed to call it, Avhen they did not give it 
its old Hebrew name. The word came into the Sep- 
tuagint, and so into common use in Judaea, before the 
times of our Lord, and in this way : — 

When those Septuagint translators, in turning the 
Hebrew Scriptures into Greek about B. C. 280, 
sought for a Greek word equivalent to the Hebrew 
name of the Church, they took ecdesia. This is 
classic Greek, and at Athens or any free city of 
Greece designated a meeting of the voters, legally 
called, for the transaction of public business. Such 
a word was admirably adapted, they thought, to con- 
vey to their readers the idea of the Abrahamic 
Church, as a body composed in an orderly way, with 
a constitution, qualifications and processes for mem- 
bership, and with legislative and executive powers. 
The Hebrew word for Church, Kah-hahl^ the Septua- 
gint translators have, though not with perfect uni- 
formity, rendered ecdesia^ in all about seventy 
times. 

When, therefore, in New-Testament Greek, the 
word ecdesia was used, the mind of the speaker, 
hearer, or reader would revert at once to the ancient 
Church of God. 

When our Lord used the word those two times, it 
was inevitable that his hearers would apply his allu- 
sion to that holy and divinely constituted body of 
which they were members. In view of the way by 
which ecdesia had become a well-known and well-de- 
fined word among them, any other understanding of 



68 THE CHURCH AND HER CHILDREN. 

the Saviour's allusion would have been impossible and 
absurd. 

So, while the apostles, following our Lord's exam- 
ple, changed the name from Hebrew to Greek, from 
Kah'hahl to ecclesia^ the thing named, the oneness of 
the body, remained. If passed along down the ages 
as unchanged as the foundation-faith on which it 
rested, — the Rock Christ, the same to Abraham and 
Isaiah and Peter and Edwards. 

With that word ecclesia thus coming into apostolic 
and New-Testament use, what shadow qf evidence is 
there that a new body was organized, crowded into 
notice and nse, and made to assume this ancient and 
familiar name, and all without the least explanation 
of the innovation, or allusion to it, or Jewish preju- 
dice and protest against it ? Several delicate and 
difficult questions arose between Jewish and Gentile 
converts in the first Christian Churches ; and the 
epistles show how the apostles met them. If an old 
Jewish Church was crowded out, and a new one 
brought in its place, is it not a very strange thing that 
no controversy between Jewish and Gentile Christians 
arose over the change, and left some traces of itself in 
the apostolic epistles ? So great an innovation or rev- 
olution as the blotting-out of the Church of Abraham 
and Moses and David and Malachi must have pro- 
duced some cases for apostolic arbitration in those 
early Christian ecclesias. Some record must have 
been made of so great a change. No record being 
found, or any allusion to it, is presumptive and 
almost positive evidence that there was no change 
to be recorded. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

CmCUMCISION AND BAPTISM SERVE THE SAME END. 

rr^HE outward or temporal manifestations of the 
JL Church have varied with the varjdng circum- 
stances of God's people. 

Prior to their going into Egypt it had phases un- 
like what it showed in Egypt, and still different in 
their desert wanderings toward Canaan. When it 
became united with the state by the laws of Sinai and 
the Mosaic institutes it received some modifications 
in its externals. So it was when Israel passed from 
a theocracy to be governed by kings. 

When the temple was dedicated, and the temple 
service inaugurated, it underwent still other changes 
in its outward and ceremonial management. So dur- 
ing the captivity and after the restoration. And on 
the advent, crucifixion, and ascension of our Lord, 
many and most significant changes were wrought in 
it. 

Still for substance the Church was the same on the 
day of Pentecost that it was in the days of Abraham. 
None of the changes in it had been radical, or affected 
its organic structure. 

We have already noticed the fact that circumcision 
was the first sign and seal of admission. We pass 

59 



60 THE CHUECH AND HEK CHILDEEN. 

now to consider the fact that ch^ciimcision and bap- 
tism have the same office and import. We will not, 
under this point, agitate the question whether bap- 
tism became a substitute for circumcision, or in any- 
way took its place ; nor yet the question whether 
baptism was applied to households by the apostles, as 
circumcision was in times earlier than the apostolic. 
We will notice simply and only the fact that cir- 
cumcision and baptism served equally and the same 
purpose of admitting the subject of the ordinance to 
membership in the Church of God. 

Abraham saw Christ's day, believed in Christ, was 
justified through that faith, made a public profession of 
it, and then '•' received the sign of circumcision " as a 
visible mark of the covenant between himself and God. 
It was a '' seal," an official stamp, as on a government 
treaty or contract. It was the official seal of God to 
the agreement between him and Abraham, in which 
Abraham through faith in Christ had given himself 
away to God, and God on his part had accepted the 
offering, and on the ground of his faith in Christ had 
justified him and made him the heir of special prom- 
ises. This act brought Abraham, and every other one 
who performed it after the manner of Abraham, into 
the Church of God. This was the one and only door 
to membership in that ancient Church ; and this was 
the only sign and seal. 

Now, let it be noted that in the times, and accord- 
ing to the teachings, of the apostles, the import of 
the covenant between God and his child was the 
same as in the times of Abraham : that is, on the part 
of man it was belief in Christ ; and on the part of God 



CIRCUMCISION AND BAPTISM. 61 

it was justification by tliis belief or faith. This 
is one of the most obvious truths in tlie New Testa- 
ment. Wlien a man was ready sincerely to confess 
such a faith, and humbly to receive such a justifica- 
tion, he was ready to make a public profession of 
relioion. 

This was precisely the state of mind in which the 
apostles found those three thousand on the d'dy of 
Pentecost. They wished publicly to own this cove- 
nant with God. They wished to add themselves to 
the covenant people of God. They did this. '' They 
that gladly received his word were baptized." The 
covenant thus publicly made was signed and sealed 
by baptism. At the very point and for the very 
service where circumcision was formerly introduced 
baptism now comes in. 

If any of these three thousand had, as Gentiles, thus 
believed in Christ in the days of Abraham or Jacob 
or David or Malachi, and made a public profession of 
religion, the sign and seal would have been circum- 
cision : now it is baptism. Each ceremony, therefore, 
has the same import, and fills the same office. As an 
introductory rite to the Church of God, each per- 
formed the same service. The difference in the form 
of the rites constituted no difference in their sub- 
stance and efficiency. Each did the same thing for 
the person receiving the rite. 

We find, therefore, that the Church of God was 
one and the same in the times of St. Peter and of the 
patriarchs ; that admission to it was through the 
confession of saving faith in Jesus Christ ; that this 
confession by the head of the family brought the hoiise- 
6 



62 THE CHURCH AND HER CHH^DREN. 

hold into membership ; that circumcision was the sign 
and seal of the covenant thus made ; and that in the 
times of the apostles baptism was used as having the 
same import and performing the same service for 
the subject as circumcision. 

At this point in our inquiries concerning the con- 
stitution of the Church of God, and admissions to it, 
another interesting fact arises: circumcision disap- 
pears, and baptism appears. 

We first direct attention to this as a simple fact, 
lying up on the surface of the New Testament. 
Whether this came about by the command and teach- 
ing of our Lord, recorded or unrecorded ; or whether 
apostles brought about the change by virtue of their 
office, and under the inspiration of God, — are separate 
and important points for inquiry. Now, and first, we 
notice the fact, obvious and undeniable, that the New 
Testament shows baptism at the door of the Church 
where the Old Testament shows circumcision. The 
former has not only taken the place, but is doing for 
the subject the work, of the other. 

This change and substitution of the one for the 
other was not instantaneous, though it was abrupt. 
The apostles came into the Church by the rite of cir- 
cumcision, but admitted members afterward by the 
rite of baptism. About twenty years appear to have 
been consumed in workino; the chang^e. 

The first admissions to the Church in connection 
with baptism are those mentioned as taking place on 
the day of Pentecost. This was A. D. 33. Nineteen 
years afterward, A. D. 52, a Church council is con- 
vened at Jerusalem to answer to the question, wheth- 



CIRCUMCISION AND BAPTISM. 63 

er tlie rite of circumcision should be enforced on 
Christians, many having neglected it altogether. The 
unanimous answer of the Council is that circumcision 
is not among the things necessary. And when this 
result of council was read to the Church at Antioch, 
which Church had called the council, they rejoiced 
over it.^ After this we hear very little of circum- 
cision as a rite of any importance, while baptism rises 
to the importance of an indispensable rite of admis- 
sion. 

During this brief period of twenty years, public 
opinion in the Church is wholly changed on the necessity 
of circumcision : the rite disappears from the neces- 
sary ordinances ; and another rite of the same general 
import and office is introduced and made absolutely 
necessary. 

Now, it is to be here noticed as a most significant 
fact, that these changes — the disuse of circumcision, 
and the introduction of baptism — took place when 
the Church was under the personal management of 
the apostles themselves. They saw what was taking 
place : they assented to it, advised it, defended it, and 
practised it. They were the immediate pupils of 
Christ. They were inspired men ; and they gave 
doctrines and customs, laws and ordinances, to the 
Church with unquestioned authority. As acting for 
the Head of the Church, and under his plenary con- 
trol, in every official act, they debated and decided in 
council, they organized local Churches, and adminis- 
tered Church government. Therefore what they 

1 Acts XV. 



64 THE CHURCH AND HER CHILDEEK. 

said and what they did becomes to us an "infalHble 
rule of faith and practice." 

But it is objected that there is no command in the 
Bible to substitute baptism for circumcision. 

In considering this objection, let us narrow it to the 
one simple and naked point of diflBculty raised by it, 
— by excluding all idea of the household, as included 
or not, in circumcision and baptism, — and state the 
objection thus : — 

" Baptism cannot be said to take the place of cir- 
cumcision in the adult believer's profession of religion, 
because there is no express command in Scripture for 
this change." 

It has been shown, and is generally admitted, that 
in an adult admission to the Church the two rites are 
equivalent. They have one and the same general 
aim, and answer one and the same general end. This 
being assumed, we reply to the objection : — 

1. Many of the instructions and commands of 
Christ to his disciples were never put on record. 
" If they should be written every one, I suppose 
that even the world itself could not contain the books 
that should be written." ^ In these unrecorded 
teachings of our Lord we have a right to suppose 
that many principles and practices were inculcated of 
which we are left in ignorance till we discover them 
taught and illustrated in the lives of the apo^les. 
Having taught the apostles so far as he desired, and 
being aboiit to leave them, he gave to them authority 
to act in his name, assuring them that tlie Spirit 

2 Jolin xxi. 25. 



CIRCUMCISION Amy BAPTISM. 65 

should bring all things to their remembrance. To 
this must be added the special grace of inspiration, to 
guide them perfectly in all official teachings and 
practices. In these facts is found the reason why all 
denominations of Christians receive without question- 
ing so many truths and usages, set forth in The Acts 
and Epistles, that are without the warrant of any 
special command. We receive them on the authority 
of the apostles, as commissioned of Christ and inspired 
of God. As a single illustration, take the govern- 
ment of the Church. It was managed very different- 
ly after Christ from what it was before Christ. We 
derive our policy of Church government from usage 
set forth in the book of The Acts and in the Epistles, 
which usage was introduced or sanctioned by the 
apostles. But where is their special warrant and 
command to work these changes and introduce these 
practices ? Hence the first reply to the objection : 
it is not necessary to find an express command in 
the record of Scripture to substitute baptism for cir- 
cumcision in order to declare that the change was 
made. This and this only it is enough for us to know : 
that the apostles acted under the authority of Christ ; 
and that inspiration guided them in all the official 
uses of that authority. 

2. The practice of an apostle in the matter in ques- 
tion is as authoritative as the command of Christ. 
Virtually it is nothing else. Under his commission 
and the personal, plenary supervision of his inspira- 
tion, what is the practice of the apostle in official 
duty but an exponent, a reduction to use, of the 
teachings of Christ ? 

6* 



66 THE CHURCH AND HER CHILDREN. 

If this be denied, then the New Testament, as a 
rule of faith and practice, must be sadly abbreviated. 
We put each writer under a special suspicion ; we put 
him on a moral quarantine, to prove his veracity and 
authority, — by demanding an express command from 
the Master for each of his teaching's and usaijes in 
the Church. To this absurdity does the objection 
bring us. 

But the apostles did practise baptism in the place 
of circumcision. They used it in the same place, — 
at the door of the Church, as of the same import, and 
for the same end. Tire one disappeared; and the 
other appeared as the introductory rite to the Church 
under their management, and with both their defence 
in council, and their sanction in practice. This is 
equivalent to a '' Thus saith the Lord." Therefore 
we conclude that in apostolic times baptism became 
a substitute for circumcision in the admission of 
adults to Church membership. 

In the prosecution of our inquiries we shall find 
it necessary, as the next step, to ascertain, if possible, 
when, how, and by whom this change in the initiatory 
rite was made. 



CHAPTER IX 

A BEFORMER IN JUD^A. 

HOW sudden and how strange his first appear- 
ing ! He never had sat in the councils of the 
sanhedrim, or made himself of note in the syna- 
gogues. He was not ushered into fame as the fa- 
vorite pupil of some Rabbi, or the heir of a far- 
sounding family name. 

He came without pedigree or trumpet, even as true 
greatness is wont to come. So sudden in his coming, 
as being in the manhood of his powers and of his 
theme, he seemed as one sent of God. His appear- 
ance was strange even for that generation. A coarse 
mantle of camel's hair was his robe, fast about him 
with a plain leathern girdle ; and his food was the 
spontaneous offering of the desert. Nor was all this 
affected and grotesque, as the trick of an obscure man 
to catch the gaze of a crowd. It was as the re- 
appearance from the tomb of one of the old prophets. 
It was the manner as well as the spirit and power of 
Elias. As when we, by sudden discovery, bring 
forth a painting of one of the old masters, glorious in 
the costume and colorings of an elder and better day, 
so he stood among the wondering multitude. 

But the strangeness of the man and of his manner is 

67 



68 THE CHXTRCH AND HER CHILDREN. 

forgotten in the welcome wonder of his mission. For 
all '' the people were in expectation ; and all men 
mused in their hearts of John, whether he were the 
Christ or not." ^ The times were full of this expec- 
tation of the Messiah. Men were studying promise 
and prophecy. They watched, and they waited. 
And when the prophecy of Isaiah was answered in 
" the voice of one crying in the wilderness. Prepare 
ye the way of the Lord," ^ the multitude flocked to 
the mysterious preacher, as the harbinger of the Long- 
Expected. They were eager to believe his word that 
The Christ was at the door. They could take decla- 
ration for proof ; they could leap all argument : so ear- 
nest were they to receive God's promised and anointed, 
the King of the Jews. National pride and ambition, 
personal gain and worldly glory, had sadly changed, 
in their views and expectations, the character, person, 
purpose, and work of the coming Messiah ; but their 
delusions only deepened their delirium of joy, when, 
thronging the Baptist, they heard from his lips that 
the Christ was at hand. And, if they could but re- 
ceive the Messiah of their expectation, what prepara- 
tion were they not willing to make ! A people always 
so ready to be carried awaj^ by any great religious 
truth, they heard with gladness that a new dispensa- 
tion in the Church of God was about to be ushered 
in. 

When, therefore, the forerunner . of our Lord 
preached to them repentance for sin and unbelief, and 
urged on them a cordial acceptance of their coming 

iLukeiii. 15. 2 Matt. iii. 3, 



A REFORMEU IN JUDiEA. 69 

Lord, they were eager to seal their promises of 
reform, and bind themselves over in advance to be obe- 
dient subjects in '' the kingdom of heaven," now at 
hand in a new manifestation. So there '' went out to 
him Jerusalem and all Judaea, and all the region round 
about Jordan, and were baptized of him in Jordan, 
confessing their sins." ^ So general was this expec- 
tation of the Messiah, and so ready were they to pre- 
pare the way of the Lord, that this baptism was 
almost as the baptism of the populace, so extensive 
was it. 

The import of the rite is obvious. It was performed 
on a circumcised people, the chosen of God. They 
had broad notions of discrimination between the clean 
and the unclean. When Aaron and his sons were 
consecrated for the priesthood, they were washed and 
made clean ; and when Israel was about to receive 
the dispensation of Moses and of Sinai, they were re- 
quired first to wash and be clean. Baptism has the 
import of purification and dedication ; and so now, 
when '' Jerusalem and all Judsea " are about to receive 
the Christian dispensation, this rite is administered to 
them as purifying and preparatory and dedicatory. 
Indeed, we find that their High Priest himself is in- 
augurated hj the same rite of consecration : so it be- 
came him to fulfil all righteousness ; and so, " when all 
the people were baptized, it came to pass that Jesus 
also was baptized." 

This, then, was not Christian baptism : that was 
first administered a few years afterward to those three 

3 Matt. iii. 5, 6. 



70 THE CHUECH AND HER CHILDREK. 

thousand Christian converts on the day of Pentecost. 
It was not a baptism representative of '' the washing 
of regeneration ; " for some of the subjects of it 
thirty years afterward had '-' not so much as heard 
whether there be any Holy Ghost ; " ^ and then the 
Master himself received it, in whom it could represent 
no such regenerating work. 

It was administered to Church-members. It was 
a ceremonial purification and introduction of the 
Church to a higher and holier dispensation. The 
baptism of John was a formal purification of the peo- 
ple, preparatory to the inauguration of Christianity. 
He '-'- called upon his countrymen to prepare them- 
selves — by repentance for sin, and reception of bap- 
tism as a symbol of a changed mood — to enter into 
the Messianic kingdom, now on the point of being 
established." ^ 

" An opinion, it appears, prevailed among the Jews, 
that Elias, whose coming was to precede that of the 
Messiah, as also the Messiah himself, Avould initiate 
their disciples by a sacred ablution ; and it was there- 
fore necessary, in order to avoid giving the Jews any 
pretext for doubt respecting either Christ's authority 
or functions, that both John and himself should accom- 
modate themselves to this popular persuasion." ^ 

4 Acts xix. 2. 

5 Gnevicke's Ch. Hist., Shedd's ed., p. 36. 
i^Mosheiin's Commentaries, Murdock's ed., i. 89. 



CHAPTER X. 

THE BAPTISM OF JOHN NO NOVELTY. 

THE baptism of John does not seem to have 
created, as a ceremony, any interest, as if it 
were a strange custom in Judaea, introduced by John 
himself. Indeed, in all the hostility to John and his 
work, there is no accusation that he had assumed to 
create another sacred ceremonial ; and in all the hos- 
tility of the Jews to the Christians, for their innova- 
tions in religious teachings and rites, it is nowhere 
implied that the Jews regarded baptism as a new 
ceremony, springing up with this new sect. 

We enter, therefore, in this chapter, into an inquiry 
concerning Jewish baptisms before the times of John 
the Baptist. 

The Jewish systems of religions and social life 
abounded with ceremonial washings and purifications. 
These are called in the New Testament " baptisms." ^ 
Their use was frequent and varied, as the Old Testa- 
ment abundantly shows. Any commentary on the 
passages cited in Mark and Hebrews will make this 
plain.2 

1 Mark vii. 4, Bairriaiiovc,- Heb. yi. 2, Bantiafzuv ; dia^opoig 
BaTTTLOfioli-, ix. 10. 

2 The Hebrew Old Testament uses these words mainly to express 
these baptisms: )/*3i* Dan. iv. 22. h2\J 2 Kings v. 14. Josh. iii. 15. 

71 



72 THE CHTJBCH AND HER CHH^DEEN. 

There is also a class of passages where the same act 
is expressed by a circumlocution, as in Lev. xi. 32, 
'^ It must be put into water." 

But the different persons, things, and modes of the 
Jewish baptisms are not so fully obvious on the face 
of the Hebrew text, and in its siuG^le words. 

The Greek translation in the Septuagint casts much 
light on the line of our present investigation. Indeed, 
one is at first surprised to see how much baptism the 
Seventy find in the Hebrew Scriptures. 

This Greek version of the Old Testament began to 
be made at Alexandria about 280 B.C., and was 
perhaps a century in its progress to completion. 
That tradition of its origin, starting with Irenaeus, 
may have some historical element in it; but the body 
of it is evidently of the fabulous and marvellous. He 
says that Ptolemy Lagi wished to adorn his Alexan- 
drian library with a Greek copy of the Old Testa- 
ment, and so asked the favor of a translation of it 
from the Jews of Jerusalem. They sent to the king 
seventy of their learned elders, who, each in a sepa- 
rate cell, produced one and the same version, each 
being identical with every other, word for word. 

In the absence of all historic data as to the origin 
of the Septuagint, probabilities must serve us, if we 
say any thing. 

When the Jews returned, from the Captivity, the 
Hebrew was almost an unknown tongue to the most 
of them, born and educated as they had been among 

Biith ii. 14. 1 Sam. xiv. 27. 2 Kings vm. 15. Job ix. 31. Ezek. xxiLi. 
15. Lev. iv. 6; et al ym Ps. Ixviii. 24. p2\J Ps. ix. 16 ; Lxix. 3, 15. 
Jer. xxxviii. 6. Lam. ii. ix. 



THE BAPTISM OF JOHN NO NOVELTY. 73 

the Chaldeans. When, therefore, the Scriptures 
were read in the synagogues in Palestine, they were 
rendered and explained in Chaldean. So the Jews 
at Alexandria, settling there soon after the conquests 
of Alexander, must have lost their knowledge of the 
Hebrew, and made Greek their vernacular. Their 
synagogue readings and expoundings would, then, 
naturally come through the Greek ; and so a Greek 
version of the Old Testament would be begun, ending, 
in a century or so, in an entire translation. The neces- 
sities of the case, therefore, in the natural production 
of a Greek translation, as well as any business 
request of Ptolemy, must be reckoned in among the 
producing causes of the Septuagint. 

Long before the coming of Christ this translation 
had become widely known, and much esteemed and 
used. It followed the conquests of Alexander and 
the Grecian colonies, and thus did much to prepare 
the Gentiles for the reception of Christianity. 

'^ Many of those Jews who were assembled at Jeru- 
salem on the day of Pentecost, from Asia Minor, from 
Africa, from Crete and Rome, used the Greek lan- 
guage ; the testimonies to Christ from the Law and 
the Prophets came to them in the words of the Sep- 
tuagint ; St. Stephen probably quoted from it in his 
address to the Jews ; the Ethiopian eunuch was read- 
ing the Septuagint version of Isaiah in his chariot. 
They who were scattered abroad went forth into 
many lands speaking of Christ in Greek, and point- 
ing to the things written of him in the Greek version 
of Moses and the Prophets. From Antioch and 
Alexandria in the East, to Rome and Massilia in the 

7 



74 THE CHUECH AND HER CHILDREN. 

West, the voice of the gospel sounded forth in 
Greek." 3 

Of the three hundred and fifty quotations from the 
Old Testament into the New, all but about fifty appear 
to have been made from the Septuagint. Of course it 
must have had a great influence in the Holy Land at 
the coming of Christ in shaping the religious opin- 
ions, expectations, and observances of the people. 

Yet this translation abounds with the '' baptisms " 
of St. Mark, and with the '^ divers washings" (bap- 
tisms) of St. Paul. Naaman '^ went down and 
dipped himself (l^aTtTiaazo^ seven times in Jordan." ^ 
Isaiah is made to say, ^' My heart wanders : iniquity 
baptizes me " ^ (^ dpofxia [A,e ^aitxiUC). Judith, just 
before she beheaded Holofernes, '-'• abode in the camp 
three days, and went out in the night into the valley 
of Bethulia, and washed herself in a fountain of 
water by the camp " ^ [t^uTtiKero iv xfi Ttapcfx^oXfi tm zrig 
Ttr^yr^g xov vdaxog^. The son of Sirach, in one of his 
proverbs, gives still further illustration on our inquiry. 
^'' He that washeth himself after the touching of a 
dead body, if he touch it again, what availeth his 
washing?""^ 

Additional to these cases of the use of ^uTtxiZco^ 
there are about twenty passages where the Septua- 
gint translators have used the word ^auxco. The 
friends of the immersion theory of baptism have 
claimed that these two words are substantially one, 

3 Smith's Dictionary of the Bible, Art. Septuagint. 
■* 2 Kings V. 14. ^ Isa. xxi. 4. 6 Judith xii. 7, 

"^ Ecclus. xxxiv. 30. BamL^ofievog unb veKpov Kal ttIiKlv dnTOfievot: 
avTOVj Ti cocpiTiTjoev rZ) ?[,ovTp(3 avTov ; 



THE BAPTISM OF JOHN KO NOVELTY. 75 

as a measure or equivalent each of the other. 
Dr. Carson approbates Dr. Gale's position, '^ That 
the one is more or less than the other, as to mode or 
frequency, is a perfectly groundless conceit." ^ ''The 
two words are nearly or quite synonymous," is the 
position of Prof. Dagg in his " Church Order." ^ 

For the general purposes of this chapter it is not 
necessary to affirm or deny the correctness, nice and 
absolute, of these opinions. The Hebrew language, 
as an early and simple tongue, was not affluent in. 
words of terminology for careful and speculative dis- 
tinctions ; and therefore the four Avords above cited 
are used more or less as interchangeable equivalents 
in Hebrew. A linguist, in denominational contro- 
versy, marks Grecian shades, of distinction between 
^aTtico and ^artxitoi ; and, running back, he may find 
corresponding Hebrew shades between ^7^^ and V^^ : 
but it is very doubtful whether Moses, David, 
and Isaiah would recognize and observe the distinc- 
tions in their oAvn writings. Indeed, it might trouble 
the translators of Ptolemy Lagi to mark the more 
delicate lines of meanincr that led them in several 
cases to use one of these Greek words rather than the 
other. This thought is worth our delay on it. 

Our translation says of Naaman that he " dipped 
himself seven times in Jordan." The Septuagint 
says "he baptized himself" (I'^aTtxiaazo),^^ Yet where 
in the Levitical law it is said of any article that 
an unclean animal has touched, " it must be put 
into water," the Septuagint says hg vdojQ [^acfyaerat.'^^ 

8 Bapt. Board Pub., 1853. 9 South. Bapt. Pub., 1859. 
10 2 Kings V. 14. n Lev. xi. 32. 



76 THE CHURCH AKD HER CHILDREN. 

In Joshua we read that " the feet of the priests that 
bare the ark were dipped in the brim of the water ; " 
which the Septuagint renders t^drpriaav.^^ In the ac- 
count we have of the murder of Benhadad, it is said 
that Hazael " took a thick cloth, and dipped it in 
water, and spread it on his face, so that he died." 
Tiie Seventy state it thus : eXa^e to fiax^uQ nal e^amv 
Iv rep vduTiJ^ In the account of these four acts there 
is such a simihirity of mode, that it is difficult to tell 
how the meaning could require two words to express 
it. The dipping of Naaman, and of the unclean 
thing, and of the feet of the priests, and of Hazael's 
thick cloth, are acts quite alike, so far as the subjects 
of the dipping are concerned. Would not either 
^ajtzG) or ^ami'Qco equally well express each act ? 

It is not needful to extend criticism over each use 
of the two words by the Greek translators of the 
Hebrew Scriptures. Full references are appended 
for those who would examine every case.^^ These 
references are enough to show that the Seventy 
found much of baptism in the Hebrew Old Testa- 
ment ; and they constitute good foundation for St. 
Mark to speak of '' baptisms," and for St. Paul to 
speak of '' divers baptisms." They were many and 
varied. 

When, therefore, John came baptizing, there 
was no need that the act should excite surprise, or 

12 Josh. iii. 15. i^ 2 Kings viii. 15. 

i^BaTTTi^w: Isa. xxi. 4. 2 Kings v. 14. Jndith xii. 7. Ecclus. xxxiv. 
27. BaTTTw: Ex. xii. 22. Lev. xi. 32; iv. 6, 17; ix. 9; xiv. 6, 10, 51. 
Num. xix. 18. Dent, xxxiii. 24. Jo^h. iii. 15. Knth ii. 14. 1 Sam. xiv. 
27. 2 Ivings viii. 15. Jobix. 31. Ps. Ixvui. 23 (Sept. Ixvii. 24). Dan. 
iv. 33; V. 21. 



THE BAPTISM OF JOHN NO NOVELTY. 77 

create remark. It had no novelty to a Jew : it was 
no innovation. The Jews in the times of John the 
Baptist were familiar with it. 

Their nse of it, moreover, was evidentlj^ broader 
than the Septuagint use of the specific terms for it. 
They saw baptisms in acts where neither Hebrew nor 
Greek writer expressed it in the technical words. 
Their understanding of the Old Testament, and of 
the customs of the Hebrew fathers, led them to see 
baptisms where no lexicon indicates them. 

How else can we accept the statement of St. 
Paul ? — ''I would not that ye should be ignorant, 
brethren, how that all our fathers were under the 
cloud, and all passed through the sea, and were all 
baptized unto Moses in the cloud and in the sea."^^ 

But the Hebrew record of that miraculous deliver- 
ance of Israel makes no mention of a baptism : the 
Grecian Seventy find no suggestions of a baptism. 
What warrant has the apostle to use the word ? 
Whence has he any intimation that there was a bap- 
tism in the transaction at the Red Sea ? 

St. Paul is not making a quotation, statement, or 
translation of an historic fact. He is expounding, 
interpreting, a fact. He is stating results, not the 
physical modes. Moses describes the modes, the 
result of which, the apostle says, was the baptism of 
all Israel unto Moses. Tlie miracle of their deliver- 
ance by means of the divided sea had begotten in 
them a faith, a confidence, in Moses, as a leader 
appointed of God and every way to be trusted. It 

1^ Kal ixa/iTeg etc, rbv ^uvGfjv elSannaavTo kv ry ve(pe?iy kql tv ry ■duTia-GGy. 
1 Cor. X. 1, 2. 

7* 



78 THE CHURCH AND HER CHILBKEN. 

had brought them under the influence and control of 
Moses : it had made them over to him as willing and 
trusting followers. As an unorganized, emigrant mul- 
titude, distrustful of him, and in a terrible emergency 
between the pursuing Egyptians and the sea, God 
interposed marvellously. The interposition was a 
divine indorsement of Moses, and all Israel saw it. 
So by this passage of the sea they put themselves 
under him, gave themselves up to him, to be led and 
ruled and converted into a nation. The miracle 
wrought out their faith in Moses ; and the result of 
this faith, the coming under the controlling influ- 
ence of Moses, the apostle calls being '' baptized 
unto Moses." The baptism is a resultant influence. 
It comes on all Israel after the passage of the sea, 
and as an effect of the passage. They were bap- 
tized into Moses by the passage. ^^ 

This case is an instructive one : it is a key to a 
storehouse of thoughts on Jewish baptisms. It shows 
us how St. Paul's Hebrew mind and studies had led 
him to see baptisms where there were no modes or 
technical statements of them. It shows us, too, how 
the scholarly among his own people and the Gentiles, 
in the first and early centuries of Christianity, were 
able to find so many baptisms in the Old Testament, 
of which Hebrew authors and Greek translators 
make no mention. Calling attention to a few of these 
will illustrate the familiarity of the Jewish mind 



16 Has the water in this case any thing to do with the "baptism " ? 
If God had as niiracnlously delivered Israel b\' opening some dehle 
tlu'ongh a mountain and leading them to safety, would they not 
just as fully have been "all bai)tized unto Moses" ? 



THE BAPTISM OF JOHK NO NOVELTY. 79 

with baptism in the days of John, and so show still 
further why his baptism of the populace at Jordan 
did not excite the interest of a novelty, or the oppo- 
sition of an innovation. 



CHAPTER XL 

JEWISH BAPTISMS. 

"TXT^E enter now into an historical inquiry as to 

V V the use the Jews made of baptism before the 
times of John the Baptist. 

The entire fact may be stated in a paragraph. 
The Jews were much inchned to make converts from 
among the Gentiles. So great was their zeal in this, 
that our Saviour charged them that they would 
" compass sea and land to make one." When one 
was gained over to the Jewish system, he came fully 
into the privileges and obligations of a Jew by three 
ceremonies, — circumcision, baptism, and sacrifice. 
Hence as proselyting was common, so was baptism, 
among the Jews in the times of John the Baptist ; 
and so the rite, as administered by him, did not create 
any interest as a novelty or innovation. 

Having stated it for substance, let us now unfold 
this historical fact more particularly, that we may 
feel more fully its just bearings on our general sub- 
ject. 

It may be best to mention first the authorities 
used. The first and main one is the Talmuds. 
These are a compend of Jewish writings. The 
Jews hold, that, when God gave a written law to 

80 



JEWISH BAPTISMS. 81 

Moses, he also gave him an oral law, to be preserved 
and passed down from age to age by tradition. 
After the destruction of Jerusalem, and the disper- 
sion of the Jews, A.D. 70, they were afraid of losing 
this oral law, and so took measures to have it com- 
mitted to writing. This was accomplished between 
A.D. 190 and A.D. 220, a date near enough to the 
times of our Saviour to allow for a correct record 
concerning their religious ceremonies. Prideaux says 
they were written out within one hundred years of 
John the Baptist. During the century following, the 
Jewish Rabbles in Palestine wrote out extensive com- 
mentaries on this traditional law. These commenta- 
ries, with the oral law, constitute what is called the 
Jerusalem Talmud. Before A.D. 500 the Rabbles 
among the Babylonian Jews also prepared a com- 
mentary on this same traditional law. This, with 
the oral law, composes what is known as the Babylo- 
nian Talmud. These Talmuds, it will be seen, must 
be of the highest authority on Jewish doctrine and, 
usage. The oral law, which in them is reduced to 
writing, they were accustomed to place even above 
the recorded law of God as set forth in the Penta- 
teuch. And so Christ said to the Jews, " Ye have 
made the commandment of God of none effect by 
your tradition." 

There was a Jewish sect in the times of our Lord, 
called the Hemerobaptists. In his book on '' The 
Heresies," Epiphanius (born A.D. 310, archbishop in 
Cyprus) mentions this order, as accustomed to the 
daily ablution of the entire body as indispensable to 
salvation. Hegesippus, a writer in the middle of the 



82 THE CHURCH AND HER CHILDEEN. 

second century, mentions this same sect as quoted 
by Eusebius in his Ecclesiastical History. Justin 
Martyr, in his dialogue with Trypho, refers to them, 
but calls them simply ''Baptists," In the Indiculum 
Hsereseon, a little work commonly attributed to Je- 
rome, they are also mentioned. 

This naked reference is made to these Everyday 
Baptists, and to the early authors who speak of them, 
simply to show that in the times of our Lord bap- 
tism was so common among the Jews that a fanatical 
denomination had become established on the theory 
that its daily observance was necessarj^ to salvation. 

Another principal authority is Maimonides. He 
was a most learned Rabbi, who flourished about 
A.D. 1150. " The Jews are unable to set bounds 
to the veneration in which this learned man is held." 
They call him '' The Eagle of the Doctors," " The 
Glory of the East," " The Light of the West." i 
Of course his historical statements concerning the 
usages of his people must command a place of the 
first importance. _ 

Among English authorities. Dr. Lightfoot holds a 
pre-eminent place.^ He made himself very familiar 
with all these writings of the Jews to which we 
have referred, and is more used than any other 
English author, as both most learned and reliable. 
On the subject in hand he says, — 

1 Berk's History of the Je^ys, p. 179. 

2 See, for general reference, London ed. folio, two vols., 1G84; 
Hebrew and Talmiidical Exercitations on St. Matthew iii. 5, vol. 11. 
116-22; A Sermon preached before the Natives of Staffordshire, 1658, 
ii. 1040, etseq.; a Sermon i) reached at Aspeden, 1G60, ii. 1132, et seq.; 
also, i. 208-10, 525-7. 



JEWISH BAPTISMS. 83 

" The first use of baptism was not exliibited at 
that time [of John the Baptist] ; for baptism very 
many centuries of years backwards had been both 
known and received in most frequent use among the 
Jews, and for the very same end, as it now obtains 
among Christians, namely, that by it proselytes 
might be admitted into the Church ; and hence it 
was called baptism for proselj^tism ; " ^ and he refers 
to the Babylonian Talmud for his authority. 

He adds that it was an axiom among the Jews, 
'' No man is a proselyte until he be circumcised and 
baptized ; " ^ and so he says, '' You see baptism 
inseparably joined to the circumcision of proselytes.^ 
And Maimonides says the same : '' In all ages, when 
an ethnic is willing to enter into the covenant, and 
gather himself under the wings of the majesty of 
God, and take upon him the yoke of the law, he 
must be circumcised and baptized, and bring a sacri- 
fice, or, if it be a woman, be baptized, and bring a 
sacrifice." ^ 

^By this last remark of Maimonides it will be 
noticed that female converts to Judaism received the 
ordinance of baptism. The authorities are full on 
this point. This is a very important historical fact 
to be borne in mind, while meeting the objection, that 
if baptism is made to take the place of circumcision, 
only males could be baptized. 

The Talmud says, " We find, concerning the maid- 
servants who were baptized but not circumcised," 

3 Liglitfoot's Works, London, 1684, vol. ii. 117. 

4 Ibidem. 5 Do. p. 118. 

6 Wall's Hist. Infant Bap., Cotton's ed., Ox. :814, vol. 1. 5. 



84 THE CHUKCH AND HER CHILDREN. 

that they are proselytes. '' One baptizeth a heathen 
woman in the name of a woman : we can assert that 
for a deed rightlj^ done." ^ And again: ''When a 
proselyte is received, he must be circumcised ; and 
then . . . they baptize him in the presence of two wise 
men, saying. Behold, he is an Israelite in all things ; 
or, if it be a woman, the women lead her to the 
waters," &c.^ 

And, what should be more carefully noted as bear- 
ing peculiarly on our inquiry, if the parents were 
baptized, the young children were included as a mat- 
ter of course. The law of baptism held all who were 
held by the law of circumcision, and went beyond, 
including females. From the abundance of testi- 
mony to this point, an item or two must suffice. 

Says Lightfoot : "• For so was the Custom of the 
Jewish Nation in their use of Baptism, when a Pros- 
elyte came in, his children were baptized with him : 
and all this upon this ground, that all that were re- 
lated to the parent might come into Covenant."^ 

And to the same effect he quotes the Babylonian 
Talmud and Commentary thus : '' They baptize a 
little Proselyte according to the judgment of the 
Sanhedrim. If he be deprived of his father, and his 
mother bring him to be made a Proselyte, they bap- 
tize him, because none becomes a Proselyte without 
Circumcision and Baptism, according to the judgment 
of the Sanhedrim, that is, that three men be present 
at the Baptism, who are now instead of a father to 
him." 10 

7 Lightfoot ii. IIT-I.S. 8 WaU's Hist. Inf. Bap., 1. 7. 
9 Works, VOL ii. 1128. ^ Do. 118. 



JEWISH BAPTISMS. 85 

As to the age under which a child may be the 
proper subject of infant baptism, they had this 
rule : — 

" Any male child of a proselyte, that was under 
the age of thirteen years and a day, and females that 
were under twelve years and a day, they baptized as 
infants, at the request and by the assent of the 
father, or the authority of the court, because such an 
one was not yet the son of assent, as they phrase it, 
i.e., not capable to give assent for himself; but the 
thing is for his good. If they were above that age 
they consented for themselves." ^^ 

And this usage of infant baptism among the Jews 
is farther illustrated by one of those mercies that 
cropped out over the barbaric roughnesses of their 
times. The practice of the heathen to expose their 
infants to death is well known ; and such were 
often found by the Jews, and adopted into their fam- 
ilies either as children or servants ; and they did 
the same often, with infants that came into their 
hands by victory on the battle-field. For the treat- 
ment of these the Jerusalem Talmud thus pre- 
scribes : — 

'' Behold, one finds an infant cast out, and bap- 
tizes him in the name of a servant. Do thou also 
circumcise him in the name of a servant. But, if he 
baptize him in the name of a freeman, do thou also 
circumcise him in the name of a freeman." ^^ 

And the statement of Maimonides is to the same 
pui'pose : " An Israelite that takes a little heathen 

11 WaU i. 17. 12 Ibid i. 20. 



86 THE CHUECH AND HER CHH^DREN. 

child, or that finds an heathen infant, and baptizes 
hirn for a proselyte, behold, he is a proselyte." ^^ 

These are but a few of the very many specific and 
direct declarations of the practice of baptism by the 
Jews in the times of John the Baptist. It is not 
needful to multiply these quotations. But there are 
certain incidentals or wayside items, that have a 
peculiar force in illustrating Jewish baptisms. 

Maimonides says that when any offered themselves 
as proselytes for baptism, "- they make diligent inquiry 
concerning such, lest they come to get themselves 
under the law for some riches that they should 
receive, or for dignity that they should obtain, or for 
fear. If it be a man, they inquire whether he have 
not set his affections on some Jewish woman ; or a 
woman, her affection on some young man of Israel." 
Maimonides makes mention also of many minute 
circumstances that must attend the ceremony of bap- 
tism. It must not be on the Sabbath, nor on any 
holy day, nor by night. There must be three wit- 
nesses of the ceremony. Circumcision must precede 
it, and a bloody offering accompan}^ it ; yet, in times 
of revolution or dispersion, the sacrifice may be 
omitted. The sacrifice must be a burnt-offering of 
a beast, or of two turtle-doves, or of two young 
pigeons. It was also a rite never to be repeated on 
the same person. Nor were the children born to pros- 
elyte parents after their baptism to be baptized ; for 
baptism by the Jew was regarded as a purification of 
the race or family stock. The parents once purified, 

13 WaUi. 20. 



JEWISH BAPTISMS. 87 

all their unborn posterity were made pure up to 
parental apostacy. 

Here is the fittest phace to mark the sharp distinc- 
tion that the Jews made between baptism and circum- 
cision in their uses. Baptism constituted one a Jew, 
while circumcision constituted him a Church-mem- 
ber. 1^ 

The side-allusions to this usage, scattered through 
the best Jewish authorities, show baptism to have 
been as surely an ordinance among them as circum- 
cision or sacrifice. And now we see the reason for 
these stronof and confident declarations of Dr. Lig^ht- 
foot, a man so scholarly in the writings of the Jews 
concerning their doctrines and antiquities. '' Bap- 
tism was well enough known to the Jews ; and both 
John and Jesus Christ took it up as they found it." 
'* Christ took up baptism as he found it in the Jewish 
Church ; and they baptized infants as well as grown 
persons." " Think not that baptism was never used 
till John Baptist came and baptized. It was used in 
the Church of the Jews many generations before he 
was born." " Baptism of men, women, and children, 
was no new thing among them, when John Baptist 
came baptizing, but a thing as well known as with 
us now." '' Christ took baptism into his hands and 
into evangelical use, as he found it, this only added, 
— that he might promote it to a worthier end and to 
a larger use. The whole nation knew well enough 
that little children used to be baptized. . . . Nor do 
I believe this People that flocked to John's Baptism 

14 ^aU i. 5-45. 



88 THE CHURCH AND HER CHILDREN. 

were so forgetful of the manner and custom of the 
Nation, that they brought not their little children 
also with them to be baptized." " We suppose, 
therefore, that men, women, and children came to 
John's baptism, according to the manner of the 
Nation in the reception of Proselytes." ^^ 

When baptism was introduced among the Jews is 
not definitely known. Its origin among them is of 
very great antiquity, as we are informed by Jost.^^ 
The Septuagint says that Naaman was baptized 
[k^amioaTo) in the Jordan for the curing of his lepro- 
sy, and that unrighteousness baptized Isaiah (// drouiu 
fis ^aTtTumy^'' There are about twenty cases in the 
Septuagint where the Greek for '' baptism " is used 
as in the Xew Testament. Now, if Alexandrian 
Greek, B.C. 280, could properly describe acts as 
baptisms that took place among the Jews seven hun- 
dred and nine hundred years before the Christian era, 
we can easih^ presume that baptism was a rite of very 
great antiquit}^ among them. One thing is evident : 
in the times of our Lord the rite was national among 
them. So Jost saj^s, '' Jesus also, honoring the na- 

15 Liglitfoot's Works, vol. ii., pp. 1129, 1133, 1040, 119, 122. See 
also Moslieim's Hist. Com., vol. i. 89, Murdock's translation. "No 
special historical incident is necessary to account for the origin of 
John's baptism. Sinc^ lustrations were common in the Jewish wor- 
ship, it would readily occur to him to represent, by a symbolical 
rite, the repentance wliich he preached. True, this was not done by 
his own arbitrarj' wiU : the Divine SiDii'it," &c. Olsliausen's Com., 
Matt. iii. 1. 

16 Jost, "a learned JeAvish Eabbi, who has devoted his life to the 
investigation of such subjects, and who is considered by intelligent 
Jews as the most profound historian of the age."— Eev. Ja:mes 
MuRDOCK, D.D., Bib. Itepos xiv. 174. 

17 Isa. xxi. 4. 



JEWISH BAPTISMS. 89 

tional custom, received consecration from him" (John 
the Baptist). 18 

In these historical inquiries into the baptism of 
John, we find several important facts. 

Baptism, as a religious ceremony, was in common 
use among the Jews in the time of John the Baptist. 
Why introduced among the Jews, and how long be- 
fore, and by what authority, are questions not per- 
tinent to the unfolding of our one topic.^^ It is 
enough here to knovf the fact that baptism was in 
general practice among the Jews before and during 
the time of John. It was used as an introductory 
rite to a new religion. The Jews esteemed the pagan 
Gentiles as an unclean people ; yet they Avere con- 
stantly drawing converts from them. When one came 
over to Judaism, he received the baptismal cleansing. 
The act made him a Jew. It initiated him into a 
new religion. It did not admit him to Church-mem- 
bership : this was the office of circumcision. When 

18 " Falhintiir qni ejus natale^ non ultra Joliannis prreconiuni ex- 
tendunt. Scriptura pariter ac Jo^eplius de hujus baptismo loquun- 
tur, tanquain ritu duduni in ecclesia Judaico recepto." 

Jo. Andre?e Danzii Baptismus Proselit. Judaic. Thesaurus TJgo- 
lini, Tom. xxii. 

19 JudtTei baptismos suos quotidianos ab ^gyptiis aut aliis in vieino 
gentibus hausisse videntur. Spencer. De Legibus Heb. : Lib 1, c. viii. 
sec. iii. 

Antiquos enim lavandi et convivandi ritus, qui culttis Judaici 
atque etlmici i)ars magna fnere, Cliristus iii mysteria sua transtidit, 
et ad usus non'multum dissimiles iis, quibus olim inveniebant, in 
baptismo et coena conseoravit. Do. Lib. iii., c. ii. sec. iv. 
• Baptismus Chi-istianorum Ebraicum baptismum, quo tum pa- 
rentes ipsorum, ut volerunt ipsi, tum proselyti Judaismo initiaban- 
tur, baud parum imitibatur ; unde nee novus visus est hie ritus cixm 
fide Christiana imbutis adhibebatur. 

Selden. De EutychiiEcclesisesuse Origines, § x. 
8* 



90 THE CHURCH AND HEB CHH^DEEI^. 

the father of a family received it, the rite was also 
administered to his children of thirteen years and 
under. If an adult female became a proselyte, she 
also received baptism. So was the ordinance both 
national and common. 

When John the Baptist entered on his work as the 
forerunner of Christ, and as introducing a new reli- 
gious dispensation, he found this proselyte baptism in 
common use. His work was to persuade the Jewish 
populace to receive a higher and holier religion, to 
proselyte them to another system. This proselyte 
baptism was precisely the rite he needed to indicate 
the purification of his converts, and to seal them 
over to this new religion. This baptism John prac- 
tised during the years of his ministry ; and so suc- 
cessful was he, that it became a national proselj^tism. 
There " went out to him Jerusalem and all Judaea, 
and all the region round about Jordan, and were bap- 
tized of him in Jordan, confessing their sins." 



CHAPTER XIL 

THE RABBIES AND TALMUDS AS AUTHORITY. 

IT appears that baptism was a common sacred rite 
among the Jews when John the Baptist began 
his mission in the wilderness of Judgea. The origin 
of the rite was so ancient among them as to be un- 
known. The Septuagint shows its existence in the 
times of Naaman, B.C. 80-1. When Gentiles were 
proselyted to Judaism they were baptized, and their 
children also. 

Very few historical facts as old as these stand out 
so clearly in ancient record. Many corner-stones of 
empires, and foundations of dynasties, and chrono- 
logical pivots, conceded and used as the best material 
of ancient history, have far more of the dust of ages 
and obscurity on them, than lies on these ecclesi- 
astical facts. Doubts on such data must make the 
realms of ancient history mythical generally ; and, un- 
less one proposes to go into doubting as an historical 
sceptic, and for the policy of it, we see not how these 
facts can be set aside. 

It may be objected, that we have quoted mainly 
Rabbles and the Talmuds, and Jewish authors, and 
that these are not to be trusted. Had the Jewish 
writer the least motive to falsify the records of his 

91 



92 THE CHUECn AND HER CHILDREN. 

people and Church on this subject ? It cannot be 
shown that any gain, direct or remote, would accrue 
to him by so doing. Very like the objector will make 
the old and commonplace point, that there is much 
in the Talmuds tliat is frivolous, absurd, and even 
bare nonsense. Very true ; this is a characteristic of 
those Jewish writings : but does such a quality in a 
work disprove its historic verity ? May we deny 
that the man made the speech because very foolish 
things were said in it ? May we say that a sermon 
could not have been trutliful because it was frivolous, 
or not genuine because it was stupid? May we 
deny that men have attacked the authority of the 
Talmuds, because the attacks were so puerile ? If 
nonsense in a book disproves the authenticity and 
genuineness, what wall become of the scholastic and 
monkish works of the middle ages on theology and 
philosophy and the sciences ? — what of many of this 
age, eighteen hundred years hence ? 

One fact is a total refutation of the objection that 
the Talmuds are not to be trusted on questions of 
history. All ecclesiastical and exegetical writers on 
the authors and ceremonies and times of the New 
Testament, make free use of the Talmuds, where 
there is nothing manifestly untrue in the quotation 
or reference desired. Those most interested to dis- 
prove their authority on points just cited quote 
them on other points without any historical scepti- 
cism. One case will serve, while long chapters of 
illustrations could be given. In his admirable trea- 
tise on The Scriptural Law of Divorce, the Rev. Dr. 
Hovey, professor of theology in the Baptist Theo- 



THE BABBIES AND TALMUDS AS AUTHORITY. 93 

logical Seminary at Newton, quotes the teachings of 
Hillel and Shammai. Of all the rabbinical teachers 
who furnished materials for the Jerusalem Talmud, 
these two men are pre-eminent ; and the professor 
makes this reference to them, through the Talmud, 
with perfect propriety and safety. We also would 
like the privilege of quoting the same learned Rab- 
bies and their co-workers in that vast thesaurus of 
Jewish antiquities. 

Of course the Talmuds are to be used, like any 
other very ancient work, with a critical discretion. 
AVe use Josephus in that way, suspecting him where 
his Roman interests might warp him, and trusting him 
where known fact does not contradict him. Rawlin- 
son convicts Herodotus of grave errors ; but we rely 
on the great historian, nevertheless, where he is not 
convicted. In the same way, it is manifestly just 
to use the Jewish writings of the early Christian 
period. 

We allow the authority of Josephus ; yet we re- 
member, when reading him, that he studied the 
gratification of the Romans quite as much as fidelity 
to his own people. He sought favor with those who 
had conquered and devastated his country, and so 
wrote with a mingled policy and truthfulness. All 
this we bear in mind ; but we trust him where he is 
in no temptation to prove an unfaithful historian. 

The editor of the Mischna lived and performed his 
work only about half a century later than Josephus ; 
and there appears to be no good reason for not re- 
ceiving his writings with the same discrimination and 
approval. Where the Rabbles liave incorporated fa- 



94 THE CHUECH AND HEK CHILDREN. 

bles, trifles, and absurdities into the Talmud, it must 
be obvious to the intelligent reader ; while evidently 
the most that they say is truthful to the doctrines, eth- 
ics, ceremonies, and opinions of the day. The obvious 
fable should not lead us to reject the obvious fact. 
Their logic, speciall}^ on theological and moral ques- 
tions, is often childish ; but this does not vitiate their 
honestly-stated data. Their follies in moral, social, 
and ritual life cannot affect the truthfulness of the 
picture. The wrinkles and deformities in the photo- 
graph really praise the fidelity of the artist. Some 
of the most faithful and profitable chapters in the 
history of scholasticism, literature, and ethics in the 
middle ages are chapters of absurdities and trifles. 
Yet the great facts of mediaeval liistory are thus im- 
bedded; and, where the probabilities are favorable to 
a statement of fact, we credit the author for fideUty, 
and quote him as authority. Tlie Talmud s must be 
read in the same spirit of analytic trust and distrust. 
When a Jewish doctor of divinity gravely discusses 
the question. Is it right to kill a flea on the Sabbath ? 
we take his logic for what it is worth ; but the dis- 
cussion we take as a fair picture of the moral and 
ritualistic temper of the times. If no good reason 
can be shown for prejudice, prevarication, mistake, or 
intentional deception, we accept as historically true 
what he sa3^s of any religious belief, ceremony, mode 
of civil, social, or domestic life, in his times; and he 
who doubts assumes the burden of disproof. 

In estimating the authoritative worth of any por- 
tion of the Talmuds, we should consider that the 
writers were dispersed among the nations. Their 



THE EABBIES AND TALMUDS AS AUTHORITY. 95 

temple service was suspended ; and by disuse their 
ritual law was becoming a dead-letter. Their sacred 
ceremonies and customs were becoming obsolete 
through their own dispersion ; and, by consequent 
want of consultation and uniformity, they were be- 
coming corrupted. Yet they fully expected a Mes- 
siah ; and they believed that when he did come they 
would repossess the land of promise, rebuild the 
temple, and re-establish their religion in Judsea in all 
its primitive purity of ritual and sj^it. 

When such a time of restitution should come, they 
foresaw that their posterity would both wish and 
need an appeal to the law and the testimony, that all 
might be reconstructed after the pattern of the 
fathers. To meet the necessities of such a time they 
wrote out the Mischna, or oral tradition from Moses, 
and its Gemaras, or the commentaries of the Rabbies 
on it. These writings were to lie by, patient and 
immutable witnesses, to give testimony when again 
the restored Jews should rebuild the waste places, 
and inhabit the former desolations, and order the ser- 
vice of God in Mosaic and Aaronic fidelity. 

Their sincerity cannot be questioned in such an 
expectation; nor can we see any motive to unfaithful- 
ness in the records they should make for a coming age. 
As they thought that they then had every doctrine 
and custom as it should be, whatever their errors 
may have been, we see no reason why they should 
not write it out with a most punctilious exactness. 
There is an utter absence of any temptation to the 
contrary. If they affirmed any doctrinal, ceremonial, 
or ethical fact, the presumption is almost total that 



96 THE CHUECH AND HER CHILDREN. 

we should credit their statement. They wrote for 
their own people, and not for others, and had no 
motive to misrepresent themselves to please either 
Christians or Gentiles. 

Moreover, the writers lived among the things of 
which they write. Rabbi Judah, the compiler of the 
Mischna, and they whose memoranda he used, must 
have known something personally, though in youth, 
of the second temple, and were the children of those 
who sacrificed in it and saw its terrible destruction 
by Titus. As the head of the sect of the Pharisees, 
he could not have erred as to principle and fact in 
what he wrote. 

What, therefore, the sacred and profane histories 
of the early Christian centuries do not contradict in 
the Talmuds, ordinary obligation to authors binds us 
to receive, so far as a declaration of fact is concerned. 
Where they throw light on any custom, doctrine, or 
law mentioned in the Old or New Testament, it 
should be taken as testimony of the first class, because 
contemporaneous, as Prof. Hovey has quoted them 
on the question of divorce. 

In coming, therefore, to the study of the New Tes- 
tament, on any question of faith or practice, as then 
held in the old Abrahamic Church, or quietly as- 
sumed, admitted, or used in the Christian Church, 
these writings of the Jews must be a great aid. As 
we read the New Testament, some things seem to 
have been believed, assumed, and done, as a matter 
of course, and without any particular instruction, so 
far as the record shows. They appear to be part 
and parcel of the religious current of the times. 



THE BABBIES AND TALMUDS AS AUTHOUITY. 97 

recognized by Christ and the apostles, and accepted 
by simple assent, as a part of the Christian current 
that was from them to run on through the ages. It 
is as a contemporary and collateral light in such 
cases, that these rabbinical writings have their great 
worth. The loci Talmudlci in the New Testament, 
or passages illustrated more or less by these ancient 
writings, are very many. The Gospel of St. Mat- 
thew alone has one hundred and twenty of them. 
Every scholarly commentator on the New Testament 
knows that there are peculiarities, forms, and cere- 
monies found there, in connection with the Church, 
without any known and formal introduction, yet with 
apostolic sanction, that only these Jewish writings 
can explain. Hundreds of keys of thought, unlock- 
ing dark recesses in the New Testament, now com- 
mon property in Gentile authors, came originally from 
the Talmuds. 

It is, therefore, a huge assumption, and an assault 
on the canons of historical criticism, to reject the 
Jewish accounts of Jewish baptisms in the times of 
our Lord, without making specific objections to any 
excepted passage. 

Let us turn this thought in another light ut this 
point, even at the expense of anticipating the argu- 
ment of a future chapter. Very early in the Christian 
era, as early as A.D. 200, all agree that the Jews 
baptized infants ; while with the Christians the rite 
was old and w^ell established, as is also agreed, as 
early as A.D. 253. When did the Jews adopt the 
rite? And where did the Christians obtain it? 
There is only one historical answer. 
7 



98 THE CHTJECH AND HER CHILDEEN. 

The history of this rite among the Jews in the 
time of our Lord, as furnished by the Talmuds, is 
the uninspired preface to the inspired history of 
household baptism in the Book of Acts. 



CHAPTER XIIL 

THE GKEAT COMMAND. 

"ri^EACH all nations [make disciples: proselyte 
-L them to my religion], baptizing them." What 
is that ? The term is not explained. It has no quali- 
fying words as to mode or subjects. Without com- 
ment or enlargement, do the apostles know what the 
ascending Master means? Shut out all history be- 
tween the present and that time ; go back beyond 
The Book of Acts and the daj^ of Pentecost ; hear 
for yourself that command, — and what will j'Ou do? 
''- Baptizing them." What is the thing to be done ? 
To whom is it to be done ? Is there any antecedent 
or surrounding light to guide you ? You cannot 
consult The Acts of the Apostles and the Epistles, 
the councils and commentaries and Church histories. 
Is there any sacred service or ceremony of the times 
that can explain the command ? Evidently our Lord 
assumes that the apostles know what he means ; and 
they do know. 

In pursuing the inquiry, who, according to this last 
command of our ascending Lord, should be baptized, 
we need not so much a lexicon to define the word, 
or a commentary to give the opinions of the learned, 
as a view of the times when the Lord Jesus issued 
the commission. 

99 



100 THE CHUBCH Ai^D HER CHILDREN. 

For it is one of tlie first principles of interpretation, 
in gaining the import of an old law, to ascertain how 
it would fall in with the times when it was given, how 
it would suit the circumstances of that day, and how 
those to whom it was given would naturally under- 
stand it. The time and the place of the giving of a 
brief and doubtful command are two admirable 
expositors. They are as the '' two great lights " that 
God made in the beo'innins:. 

Let us, then, place ourselves with the eleven 
when they were commissioned for this baptismal 
work. They are in Judsea, and near the close of the 
first third of the first Christian century. Judaism is 
as yet the religion of the land. Its religious forms, 
rites, and ceremonies are daily seen on ever}^ hand. 
The eleven are commanded to go and make disciples 
to Christ, or proselytes to the Gospel. This is the 
import of that word '' teach," and is so given in the 
marginal reading of the received version. The 
eleven understood this duty. They saw such reli- 
gious labor in the daily life of the Jews around them. 
Those Jews were compassing sea and land to make 
proselytes ; and the disciples understood, that with a 
deeper ardor, and for a vastly holier purpose, they 
were to imitate them in proselyting. 

Then, when by their teaching they had gained a 
disciple, a proselyte to this new religion, they were 
to baptize him. This ordinance, as we have seen, 
was no novelty to them. It was from the olden time 
in the Holy Land. As zealous Jews formerly them- 
selves, they had labored to gain Gentile converts, and 
bring them to this purifying rite ; and often had 
they seen it administered. 



THE GEEAT COMMAND. 101 

The Lake of Merom and the Sea of Galilee, as well 
as waters more private, had witnessed the dedication 
of many a proselyte. What multitudes had they seen 
thronging to John's baptism at JEnon, and along the 
Jordan ! And probably the apostles themselves re- 
ceived this same baptism. 

Then, what they were commanded now to do was 
no new and strange thing. The mode and nature of 
the ceremony were familiar to them, as common 
usage in their native land. 

True, they were to exact a more spiritual and rad- 
ical preparation for it, and were to attach a deeper 
significance to it ; but the rite itself was to them old 
and familiar. 

They had seen adult females receive, as proselytes, 
this ordinance, and so become members of the Com- 
monwealth of Israel. They saw them in the mixed 
multitude that gathered so eagerly to John's baptism. 
So, when they made disciples and baptized them, 
they would, as a matter of course, include the fe- 
males, though we do not find any specific order to 
this effect. As a matter of recorded fact, we find 
that they did thus infer their duty, and did baptize 
women. 

The eleven also saw that proselyte parents, coming 
to this ordinance under John the Baptist, brought 
their little ones with them, and made them over to 
the new religion with the same ceremonial seal of 
water. They knew no case where a proselyte parent 
had kept back his infant child from baptism. To the 
male infant of a Gentile thus coming over to Judaism, 
they knew that baptism was as much a matter of 



102 THE CHUPvCH AND HER CHILDREN. 

course as circumcision. Each was inevitaLle. " The 
\\'hole nation knew well enouofh that little children 
used to be baptized.'' It was as persistently exacted 
as the other ceremonies so tenaciously held and 
rigidly enforced by that ritual people. It was an 
integral part of the idea of proselyte baptism, as held 
and practised in those times, that it covers the child 
as well as the parent. This the eleven knew, and 
saw illustrated, and very like had practised, as Jews. 

This was the iisaa^e and the teachins: of those 
times. These were the surroundings of the disciples, 
when commanded to baptize their converts. An 
ancient and common rite. that, coming on the head, 
invariably covered the members, of the household, 
they were to administer. There is no qualifying 
word, no intimation, that in the new use of an old 
lite there is to be any change as to the sex or age of 
the subjects of it. 

Place yourself, now. in those times, and in those 
circumstances: and. receiving that command, whom 
would you baptize ? How woidd the sentiments and 
usages of the times, concerning the rite of proselyte 
baptism, interpret this command to you ? The Jews 
around you, your neighbors, are industrious in mak- 
ing proselytes ; and, gaining the head of a Gentile 
family, they baptize the household. You are com- 
manded to make proselytes and baptize. You have 
no command or intimation to draw a dividins: line 
between the parent and the infant child in adminis- 
tering the ordinance. The command is simply to 
baptize ; as if, from all you know of usage, and all you 
see in practice about you, there could be no need of 



THE GREAT COMMAND. ' 103 

describing more specifically who should oe baptized. 
You are left, therefore, for an interpretation of the 
command, to the practice of your proselyting neigh- 
bors, the Jews. 

They followed the rule as the Talmud records it : 
^' Any male child of a proselyte, that was under the 
age of thirteen years and a day, and females that were 
under twelve years and a day," should be baptized. 

In those circumstances could the eleven do any 
thino; otherwise than baptize believers and their house- 
holds ? What was there to suggest to them in those 
times any other course ? What was there to give 
to them the notion, so foreign to all the teaching and 
practice of the day, and of the Jewish Church from 
Abraham, that the infant of the believer was to be 
passed by ? 

And here it should be said that we are not to mark 
out a course, or provide an interpretation for the 
eleven, from the views and feelings of this day. We 
may not make up a creed and course of conduct out 
of our present denominational material, and carry it 
back to them for acceptance and use. 

Out of the material for a judgment of duty that they 
then had, in the traditions, teachings, and practices of 
their times, what line of action would they naturally, 
and as a matter of course, mark out for themselves? 
As this command of our Lord is a. brief and unex- 
plained command, the import of it must be made up 
from the views and uses of baptism that prevailed 
when the command was given. As a matter of 
course, therefore, the eleven would proceed, even as 
Jews, to baptize the children of proselyte believers. 



104 THE CHFRCH AND HER CHH.DIIEN. 

And a separate consideration will enforce this con- 
clusion. 

We have already seen that the Church of God is 
one and the same, under the Jewish and Christian 
form of it. The Church of the apostolic age is but a 
continuation of the Church of the preceding ages. 
Its confession of faith, requisite for admission, is essen- 
tially the same, — a saving belief in the Lord Jesus 
Christ; though after the death of Christ this founda- 
tion faith of the Church was more clearly defined, 
and more fully stated and exacted. In this Church 
it had been from the first, as a rule, invariable and 
universal, that when the parent came into it his little 
child should receive the same seal with himself of 
dedication to God. 

Now, the eleven, constructing no new Church, but, 
as apostles, building on the foundation of the 
prophets, and only making the outlines of that foun- 
dation more clear and definite, would natui'ally go on 
the presumption that the children of believers would 
continue to come into the same relations with the 
people of God that they had always held ; and, bap- 
tism taking the place of circumcision, as an introduc- 
tory rite, and adopted, too, from common Jewish 
usage in that daj^, by which the children of proselyte 
believers were baptized, it would be the most obvious 
inference, it would come in their thoughts in the line 
of natural sequence, that they were to baptize the 
children of those adults whom they proselyted and 
baptized into the Christian dispensation of the Church 
of God. 

Or, take another standpoint from which to look for 



THE GREAT COMMAND. 105 

the path of duty for the eleven in obeying this com- 
mand. 

We have seen that our Saviour took a religious 
ceremony, common in his times, and promoted it to 
be the initiatory rite to his Church. In doing this 
he displaced the former rite of admission. One takes 
the place of the other. Now, suppose the Saviour, 
instead of making this change, had seen fit to con- 
tinue the old rite, and so had said to the apostles, 
/' Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, circumcising 
them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and 
of the Holy Ghost." In such case could the eleven 
have been in any doubt whether they should admin- 
ister the rite to the children of believers ? Though 
nothing is said of children, would they not be in- 
cluded ? Why not included, then, in a substituted 
rite, that was to answer all the ends of the other? 

Or, vary the supposition. A Baptist Board of Mis- 
sions sends a band of missionaries to a particular peo- 
ple, with the general order to proselyte them to 
Christianity, and baptize them. How shall they 
understand that command of the Board ? And what 
shall be their rule in determining the proper subjects 
of baptism ? The home usage of those who commis- 
sioned them. 

Suppose the missionaries are sent by the Ameri- 
can Board of Missions. What now shall define and 
limit the use of the word " baptize " ? The home usage 
of those who commissioned them ; and this on the 
supposition that they know what that usage is, and 
that they have no other means of interpreting the 
word "' baptize/' as to the question who should receive 



106 THE CHUKCH AND HER CHILDREN. 

the rite, except the home usage of those who com- 
missioned them. 

In these last two suppositions we have the circum- 
stances of the apostles justly set forth, as they were 
when our Lord put them in commission to baptize. 
They were to use a common and well-known rite on 
their adult proselytes. 

Their guide in the administration of the rite must 
be the ordinary Jewish usage, since the command is 
given them in general and absolute form, without speci- 
fication, qualification, or limitation. But, in the ordi- 
nary Jewish usage of that rite, the children of adult 
proselytes were included with their parents. Can a 
doubt remain, then, what course the apostles will pur- 
sue ? What is there in all the circumstances to raise 
any doubt or hesitation in their own minds ? What 
would you have done then and there, thus under the 
commission of the Lord Jesus ? 



CHAPTER XIV. 

OBJECTIONS. 

IT is now in place to notice certain common and 
plausible objections. So long as these very im- 
portant facts, now stated, are unknown or unadmitted, 
there are some objections to Infant Baptism that must 
lie with weight. 

For, if all connection between circumcision and 
baptism be cut off, and if it be denied that each is 
substantially equivalent to the other, and if the Jew- 
ish usages of baptism be kept out of the argument, 
and the history of Jewish religious ceremonies in 
the times of John the Baptist be excluded, these 
objections to psedobaptism may have a peculiar force. 
But it is a force that they only seem to have so long 
as material facts are absent. 

1. It is objected that the command is to baptize 
only believers. 

And so it may be correctly said that only believers 
in Judaism were to receive the circumcision and bap- 
tism of a proselyte. Yet, when that proselyte had 
children, even so young as to be unable to believe, 
they were to receive these rites. 

The rule among the Jews in baptizing proselytes 
was to baptize only believers. An adult believer 

107 



108 THE chu:rch and her children. 

must be found, according to the command of our 
Lord, before baptism could be administered , but, when 
found, his infant children were to be reckoned as natu- 
ral adjuncts of the man. They were regarded eccle- 
siasticaUy as parts of his personal responsibility, and 
so were not to be dissevered fi'om him in any total 
dedication of himself and all his to God. 

The ancient policy of God was to build up his 
Church by family additions ; and ever regarding, as he 
did, the family as a unit, he embraced all when he 
specified the head. So, when the parent believed, the 
children were held also by presumption and anticipa- 
tion. The policy of God was not like that of too 
many parents, who presume that the child will be an 
unbeliever, and expect it, and so treat it negligently 
and hopelessly, and thus make out a parental insur- 
ance and foreordination of unbelief. Unlike this un- 
natural process, having the seeds of death in it as an 
organic law, was the encircling bond of mercy and 
of gracious expectation in which our heavenly Father 
enclosed his accepted ones. How often in his cove- 
nants of mercy do we find the phrases, '^ children's 
children," ''a seed to serve him," "a generation" ! 

On this principle his Church was built at the first, 
having not an individual but a family basis ; and this 
policy was actively in practice in the times of our 
Saviour. He continues it in the command to baptize 
only believers. As a matter of theory in the Church 
from time immemorial, and as a theory in full practice 
in the Church to which they were to make proselyte 
additions, the apostles would, as a matter of course, 
gather in the little ones with the parents. To have 



OBJECTIONS. 109 

done otherwise would have requh^ed, first, a radical 
reconstruction of the Church, and then a specific 
order to exclude children. 

When one objects to infant baptism by saying that 
baptism is a sign and seal of saving faith, and that 
saving faith should precede it, he is obligated to 
explain a difficulty that his sweeping objection creates. 
Circumcision is called "a seal of the righteousness 
of faith." ^ Yet infants received this seal before 
they were old enough to have faith. On the same 
principle, whatever it be, they may receive baptism. 
By the same exegesis and principles infant baptism 
and infant circumcisism stand or fall together. The 
objection to the former — that faith cannot precede it — 
as a seal of faith, is valid against the latter. So the ob- 
jection is an objection against fact. It is an objection 
to what actually took place, that infants, who were not 
old enough to exercise faith, received the seal of faith. 
Moreover, if want of belief should prevent infant 
baptism, why should it not prevent infant salvation, 
since it says, " He that believeth not shall be damned " ? 

2. It is objected that there is no command in the 
Bible to baptize infants. 

In the light of the facts now before us, there would 
be no need of such a command to the apostles. The 
objection goes on the assumptions, that the apostles 
ai^e about to organize the Church of Christ as a new 
institution, and that the nature of Church member- 
ship is now to be determined for the first time, and 
that the rite of initiation is a novel one for the times, 

1 Kom. iv. 11. 



110 THE CHURCH AND HER CHH^DBEN. 

and not interpreted and limited in the extent of its 
application by precedent and daily use. 

But we have seen that the Church of Christ is one 
from the days of Abraham, and continuous through 
all the ages. No new Church is formed. David and 
Paul and the Christian converts on the day of Pente- 
cost are members of the same Church, having the 
same creed. The ancient principle of membership em- 
braced the children of the ad tilt believer. Changing 
one characteristic in the seal of membership would 
not change this ancient principle, any more than 
changing the motto on a government seal w^ould 
change the import and power of the seal. 

We have seen, too, that our Saviour took an exist- 
ing and common rite, by which the Jews admitted 
proselytes to Judaism, and promoted it to be the 
introductory rite to the Christian Church. 

When the Jews used this rite, initiating a Gentile 
parent, they invariably applied it to his little ones. 
So far, then, this would be a happy ordinance to 
come in the place of circumcision, since it embraced 
the children of believers, as circumcision had done. 

When, therefore, Christ commanded his apostles to 
baptize, what need was there to command in an 
especial manner the baptism of children ? Instead 
of allowing this objection any force, it really turns 
on those moving it. Considering all the circumstances 
in the times of the apostles, there should have been 
a special command to exclude children from bap- 
tism, if it was not designed to have them included ; 
for, if nothing were said, the presumption would be 
totally for their baptism. So the very silence of our 



OBJECTIONS. 11 1 

Lord, that is made the ground of this objection, is 
virtually an affirmation of an existing command to 
embrace the children, and an approbation and adop- 
tion of an existing practice that did embrace them. 

3. It is objected that baptism is a seal of personal 
righteousness or true piety, and so an unconscious 
infant cannot properly receive it. 

The objection misapprehends the nature of the 
ordinance. Baptism is more a rite of dedication than 
of confession. The person or thing receiving the 
ordinance is thus sacredly set apart for God, as, 
when one is baptized in the name of the Father and 
of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, the name of the 
sacred Trinity is called and set upon him, as a mark 
of new ownership. 

It is also a purifying rite ceremonially, expressive of 
the fact that what is about to be given to God should 
be first purified. It is also a rite representative of that 
inward purification in which the Holy Spirit in re- 
generation dedicates the subject acceptably to God. 

Now, as baptism serves as a rite of dedication, as 
well as for other purposes, it will at once be seen that 
an unconscious babe may be the subject of it. For a 
believing father or mother has the right to dedicate a 
child to God. All Christian parents agree in this. 
They differ only in the mode of doing it. One mode, 
and, as we think, a mode appointed of God, is bap- 
tism. God asks the gift of the child, that it ma}^ be 
his and bear his name. And, as a child is above all 
other wealth and worth, how fitting, when one makes 
a complete dedication of all he has to God, that the 
only immortal gift in the collected and total offering 



112 THE CHURCH AND HER CHILDREN. 

should be dedicated with a peculiar ceremony and 
seal! 

4. It is objected that in infant baptism the child 
has no understanding of the rite, and gives no assent 
to it. 

This is true, even as it should be. In a proper 
Christian state of society, when all heads of families 
are converted and professing Christians, baptism is an 
ordinance not to be understood or assented to by the 
subjects of it. Strictly and properly, baptism in the 
Christian Church belongs only to an infant, as cir- 
cumcision in the Jewish Church. 

In the normal use of baptism, it is a parental duty 
by which an immortal is dedicated to God. It classes 
among those duties that are to be done for another, and 
not by the person receiving the act. Adult baptism 
is a necessity created by a failure in parental duty. 
The parents of such an adult ought to have been 
godly, and to have given their child to God in this 
ordinance. Failing in this, the adult baptism is a 
necessity to cover a defect. It is irregular and abnor- 
mal. 

The case of circumcision sets this objection in its 
true light, and shows the true time and place for bap- 
tism. The only regular and proper subject of cir- 
cumcision was an infant. It was no rite for him to 
understand, or assent to. It was a parent's duty to 
God for the child ; and, had the whole family of man 
become the people of God before circumcision was 
abandoned, adult circumcision would have been im- 
possible and unknown. In its original and legitimate 
design it did not belong to adults. Its application to 



OBJECTIONS. 113 

them was an exception to the law. And the objec- 
tion that infant baptism is without the understanding 
and assent of the person lies equally against circum- 
cision. By covering too much ground it destroys 
itself. It is an objection to a principle that under- 
lies circumcision and baptism, and a thousand other 
acts that we perform for a child, — the principle that 
we may and often must act for the child without its 
assent. Baptism, when properly administered as to 
time, that is, in infancy, is simply and only the act 
of a parent ; and it is no more necessary that the 
child comprehend and agree to it than that it com- 
prehend and agree to the many duties that God 
requires us to discharge to our infant children. 
Adult baptism is a remedy for a defect, just as natu- 
ralization is, in constituting foreigners citizens under 
our government. Were there no more who could 
become immigrants, there could be no more natu- 
ralization. The citizenship of each would then come 
as a birthright, without knowledge or assent. And 
when infant baptism, even as circumcision, has its 
proper place among parental duties, as God originally 
designed, there will be no place for this irregular and 
remedial step of adult baptism. So the objection 
that the infant cannot understand and give assent to 
its baptism is not only invalid in this specific case, 
but it is subversive of a fundamental principle in 
both the divine and the famil}^ government. 

The unconscious babe cannot understand or assent 
to the last will and testament of its dying father. 
But it must not thereby lose its inheritance. 

5. It is objected that infant baptism deprives one 

10* 



114 THE CHURCH AND HER CHILDREN. 

of the privilege of making a profession of religion 
for himself. 

This objection is founded on a false assumption. It 
is assumed that a profession of religion is made in the 
administration of the ordinance, and that a profession 
of religion cannot be made unless this rite is admin- 
istered at the time. Here is a confounding: of two 
things that differ. Baptism is a rite of dedication. 
It is performed for a person. In the act the person 
is the passive recipient. He is the subject. But in 
making a profession of religion he is the agent, the 
actor. The profession is made through a creed, con- 
fession, and covenant. One may be the voluntary or 
the involuntary subject of a dedication to God ; but a 
profession of religion is a cordial consent to such a 
dedication. It is the personal declaration of one's 
religious faith, feelings, and purposes. In baptism one 
is given to God. He may be conscious of being 
given as an adult, or unconscious as an infant. If 
the former, he is not a professor by receiving the 
ordinance, unless he has made a declaration of his 
religious doctrines, experiences, and purposes. If an 
unconscious infant, it remains for the child to ratify 
the dedication in coming years, and give in his adhe- 
sion to Christ and his gospel. When he does that, 
he makes a profession of religion. He has been pre- 
viously dedicated, and bears the seal of the act. 

The objection, moreover, lies on the strange as- 
sumption, that all who come into the Church on a 
profession of faith, having received only infant bap- 
tism, are not professors of religion by any personal 
act of their own. The bare statement of such an 



OBJECTIONS. 116 

assumption refutes the objection. All nominally in 
the Christian Church, having received none but 
infant baptism, are reckoned and held as professors 
of religion in fact and form, because they made a 
public profession. By the one voice of common con- 
sent they are called professors. Yet they were not 
constituted such by infant baptism. Though bap- 
tized in infancy, if they had made no personal confes- 
sion of Christ when they came to years of discretion, 
they would not be regarded as professors of religion. 
They became such by a personal and a subsequent 
act. 

There are many ten thousands in our congrega- 
tions who were baptized in infancj^, and yet no one 
calls them professors of religion. They have been 
solemnly given to God by their believing parents. 
They have received the appointed rite of dedication. 
They properly belong to God, and are in the genera- 
tion of his people. But they liave not confessed into 
the faith of Abraham. They have not publicly 
received Christ as a personal Saviour, and his teach- 
ing as their rule of life. When they do this the act 
will be a profession of religion. The public and 
common voice of all denominations will say, that in 
that personal confession of Christ they made a pro- 
fession of religion. 

Now, all this common and public judgment shows 
two things. First, that infant baptism is not regarded 
as a profession of religion, and secondly, that it does 
not stand in the way of making a profession, when 
an adult inclines so to do. 
* So the parental duty of infant dedication does in 



lib THE CHUKCH AND HER CHILDREN. 

no way interfere with the personal duty and privilege, 
in conscious and adult years, of professing Christ. 

And, moreover, the assumption, that infant baptism 
deprives one of the privilege of making a profession 
of religion for himself, is against the judgment and 
practice of the Christian Church as a body. It is 
true that truth and right have no particular fellow- 
ship with numbers, nor are they determined b}^ ma- 
jorities. Yet the acceptance of a Christian principle 
or policy, by the Church of Christ as a body, must 
and should have its moral weight in determining the 
correctness of that principle or policy. lu this coun- 
try more than three-fourths of the Christian Church, 
embracing all denominations, have the theory and 
practice of Infant Baptism. And they do not regard it 
as displacing, or interfering with a personal profession 
of religion, when the baptized infant arrives at adult 
years. And this remark is true of nineteen-twentietlis 
of those connected with the Christian denominations 
in Great Britain. And it is well known that the same 
views are held by the Greek Church, the Romish 
Church, and the Armenian and Syrian Churches. So 
that in the aggregate of Christendom it is but a very 
small number who feel the objection that we are now 
considering, that infant baptism interferes with the 
liberty of a personal profession of religion. It is very 
true that this citation of numbers and authorities is 
not proof absolute. But it shows that the judgment 
of the Christian world is against the assumption in this 
objection, and affirms the position that one who has 
received infant baptism is as free to profess Christ as 
is the one who never received it, 



OBJECTIONS. 117 

6. It is objected that if Infant Baptism comes in to 
fill the office of infant circumcision, it ought to be 
limited to the subjects of circumcision, that is, male 
children. 

The inclusion of females in the initiatory rite to 
the Christian Church was a fruit of the centuries. 
Among the Eastern nations, in the ages before Christ, 
woman had no equal, or even prominent position with 
man. Individuality and personal responsibility did 
not attach to her as to man. In matters of a civil, 
social, and religious nature, woman was- reckoned 
without consultation, and, by silent consent, with the 
husband or father or elder brother, or nearest male 
kin. An obscure and inferior place was assigned to 
woman, even from birth. While the male infant was 
welcomed with exultation and rejoicing, a quiet grat- 
itude or ill-concealed disappointment welcomed the 
female ; and the Chinese proverb was a fair expres- 
sion of the feelings of the Orientals on this point : 
'' He is happiest in daughters who has only sons." ^ 

1 The following extract from an Oriental correspondent will slied 
much light on the question before us : — 

"One day I called on an old Mohammedan in Tripoli; and, as I 
entered the outer door, I saw some little girls and some larger ones, 
running towards the women's rooms to get out of my way. A hoy 
who was with me said that they were the daughters of the old man. 
As I came into the room where he was, he arose from his cushion on 
the floor, placed his right hand on his forehead, and then on his 
hreast, and, bowing very gracefully, said, 'May your morning be 
blessed, your Excellency ! Peace to your life ! ' 

"In a few moments a servant-boy brought little cups of jet-black 
coffee, without sugar or milk; and after T had taken a cup, and said 
a few words to the old Avhite-bearded Moslem, I asked him how 
many children he had. He replied at once, 'I have no children at 
alL' 



118 THE CHUBCH AND HER CHILDKEN. 

While the adoption of sons was common among the 
Jews, the Bible gives no instance of the adoption 
of a daugliter. The practice of polygamj^ and concu- 
Linage, so common in the irregularities of the patri- 
archs and of the Jewish nation, shows woman on this 
same low grade. For the hardness of their hearts, and 
the general degeneracy of those times, God suffered 
and tolerated this relative depression, and at times 
ignoring, of woman. And, in his institutes for his peo- 
ple, he regarded this popular estimate of woman. He 
accomriiodated his administration to the times and to 
the notions of his people. In the same spirit and 
policy of accommodation to a sensuous age, he made 
his worship and the religious services generally to 
partake of what was visible, terrible, and impressive 
to the beholder. It was for a later dispensation to 
introduce a more spiritual worship. 

So in the spirit and practice of the Abrahamic and 

*' I tlieu said, ' Whose daughters are those whom I saw running 
across the court V ' 

" ' Oh! ' said he, 'those are mine; but they are nothing but girls ! 

"At another time, calling on a Mohammedan, I asked him how 
many children he had ; and he replied, 'I have four sons; but, 
l^raise to God, I have no daughters! ' 

"Most of the people in Syria think it a gi'eat hardship when a 
daughter is born; but when they become Christians they tliink more 
wisely. 

"A few months ago, an infant daughter was born in the family of 
Antonine Yanni, a Protestant in Tripoli; and all the relatives and 
friends came to weep with him on account of the dreadful thing 
which had hapijened to the family. The grandmother of the little 
infant said that she would not kiss her for six months, because she 
Avas a girl! But when the i^eople came in, Yanni told them, 'I 
do not wish your tears. I love my daughter, and I hope to train her 
np to love the Saviour and do good. I am not a heathen any longer, 
and a daughter is as precious to me as a son once was.' " 



OBJECTIONS. 119 

Jewish ages, woman was left in obscurity in the ini- 
tiatory rite to the Church. She went in by infer- 
ence, or as conjoined to man, and unreckoned 
personally, as a child goes with its parents in a public 
conveyance. 

But when Christianity came in, woman had gained 
more of personality and isolation as an individual; 
and this new and better covenant was designed to 
place her more entirely in a position of separateness 
and private responsibilty. In Christ Jesus there was 
to be ^' neither male nor female." So the enlarged 
compass of the initiatory rite to the Church was in 
keeping with the growth of opinion and with that no- 
ble purpose and work of elevation that the gospel 
was to achieve for woman. Hence the new seal of 
personal dedication to God was adopted and intro- 
duced of Christ to mark the man and the woman 
separately, as having an equal personality and respon- 
sibility. 

Thus Christ would show a recovery of the race 
from that obscuration of woman into which she had 
fallen, and place man and woman on the common 
platform of a separate and equal responsibility, and 
as separate and equal moral heirs to a common im- 
mortality, as it was in the beginning. 

It should also be observed that a change of the 
seal from circumcision to baptism was under no such 
restraint or necessity as that the Head of the Church 
could not enlarge the application of the new seal. 
How many and important changes did he make, in 
the government of his spiritual house, in his own 
right authority. Even if we could see no aptness in 



120 THE CHUECH AND HER CHH^DREN. 

the extended use of the new seal, it would be our 
duty to receive it, since his authority is adequate for 
any variations. So we conclude that Infant Baptism 
may be said to fill the purpose of circumcision, though 
it includes females, and doubles the original number 
of subjects. 

We have seen that the change in the seal of the 
initiatory rite to the Church, so as to embrace woman, 
was a change in accordance with the changed position 
of woman as a separate and accountable individual 
in society. This change was distinctly marked in 
the times of our Saviour. 

Take one section in the history of the Church of 
God, from the nativity to the end of the apostolic 
age, about one hundred years. How prominent in the 
Church is woman made in that century, beginning 
with the annunciation to Elizabeth. In the life and 
labors of the Saviour, if the cases of repentance, 
faith, and untiring, unfaltering, and daring devotion 
to him, are not the most numerous, they are the most 
conspicuous, as recorded of woman. We find no- 
where in the Gospels illustrations of purer, firmer 
faith. The position, the undying affection, the sub- 
lime moral heroism, of those women at the Cross and 
at tlie sepulchre, were prophetic of the new relations 
in which woman would stand to the interests of the 
kingdom of Christ. They were prophetic, too, of 
those civil and social relations of woman, and her 
auxiliarj^ relations to the great human and moral en- 
terprises, that were now to open on the world. 

The providential position of those " many women " 
at the Cross was indicative of the new place that 



OBJECTIOKS. 121 

Christianity was about to give to woman. In the 
apostolic age, also, we find incidental but significant 
allusions to the fact that woman was beginning to fill 
her newly appointed place in the Christian Church, 
and in the Christian ages. 

In that first Church meeting of Christian member- 
ship, a meeting of many days' continuance, '^ with 
one accord, in prayer and supplication," a meeting 
heralding the new and glorious dispensation of the 
Spirit, it was a meeting '' with the women." Dorcas 
and Damaris, whose hearts the Lord opened, have 
worthy mention by inspired pen, as concessions of 
peculiar importance. And when Paul and Silas 
laid the Christian foundations of the Church at Thes- 
salonica, the first membership embraced " chief 
women, not a few." And it is an exceedingly in- 
teresting and singular fact that the first gospel ser- 
mon that was preached in Europe was preached to a 
company of women. The place was the bank of a 
river, outside the walls of Philippi ; and the first 
Christian proselyte and convert in all Europe was a 
woman named Lydia. 

How degraded the condition of woman at that 
time, on that dark continent, and what an apocalypse 
of mercy was to be opened to her in the introduction 
of the gospel ! It was fitting that the first hearers of 
it should be of those who were to be most richly 
blessed by it, and that the first convert should be one 
from those who were to share most amply in its 
mercies. And was it nothing significant, designed, 
and typical, that the first case of baptism in all 
Europe was a case of household baptism? For 
11 



122 THE CHUllCH AND HER CHILDKEN. 

Lyclia '' was baptized, and her household. " It Avas 
as if he who said to Paul in vision, '' Come over into 
Macedonia and help us," had also said, " All the 
households of this benighted continent must be dedi- 
cated to God." 

Thus, after the true Abrahamic pattern, the Church 
of Christ was developied at Philippi on the family 
basis. And when Paul addressed his epistle to this 
Church, ten years afterwards, he has a lively remem- 
brance of aid in the gospel that the women of 
that Church rendered ; and he says, '' Help those 
women which labor with me in the gospel." 

These incidental and wayside facts concerning 
woman, furnished by the New Testament, show her 
as coming^ into a new lic^ht. The Old Testament 
gives her no such prominence. Evidently a great 
change in her position in society has been wrought, 
and power has come to her relief that promises a 
greater. It was not the genius and spirit of the Old 
Testament system ; it was not the feeling or theory 
of the Eastern nations; it was reserved for this last, 
perfect, world-wide Christian system to say, '' The 
woman is the glory of the man.'' A declaration how 
unlike the proverb already quoted, that was the 
condensed creed of the Orient on the relative posi- 
tion of woman, " He is happiest in daughters who 
has only sons." 

The Lord Jesus understood the power and purpose 
of his gospel, and he foresaw the wide compass of 
changes that it would work for woman. It was to 
prove an elevating system for the sex, and an equal- 
izing system between the sexes. While nature and 



OBJECTIONS. 123 

the gospel would unite to assign different spheres of 
duty and of honor for the two, the gospel, at his will, 
was to set forth woman as the equal of man in in- 
herent worth, in acquired excellence, in power for 
her sphere, in importance as an individual, in rights 
and immunities as a separate person before God. 

The gospel assigned to woman a place and an effi- 
ciency in the conversion of the world to God, that 
the Old Testament economy never contemplated. 
We see this fact made evident wherever Christianity 
is unfolded and made predominant. In all the great 
social, moral, and religious movements of our day, 
the force that woman lends to them is immense. In 
the entire membership of the churches, we find two- 
thirds of it to be of females. An individuality, a per- 
sonality, and an accountability, now attach to woman, 
to which the Abrahamic and Mosaic dispensations 
were utter strangers. As this was the design, so it is 
the fruit, of Christianity. 

The Saviour, designing and foreseeing this changed 
and prominent position of woman, saw fit to make a 
change in the initiatory rite to the Church, that 
would mark her equality with man. The first rite 
corresponded with the spirit and custom of the ages, 
throug^h which it continued in overlookinoc woman. 
The second agrees with the new relations in which 
the gospel places her in community, as a person, hav- 
ing all the privileges and responsibilities appertaining 
thereto. 

As master of ceremonies in his own house, the 
Church, it was, therefore, for him to make this, or any 
cTther change that seemed good to him. The fitness 



124 THE CHUBCH AND HER CHH^DBEN. 

of the change of rites, and the enlarged application, 
in the case in question, must commend itself to all, 
as corresponding with the change in the social, moral, 
and religious position of woman. 



CHAPTER XV. 



CHEIST AND THE CHILDEEN. 

"/~\F sucli is the kingxlom of heaven." The phrases, 
V^ " kingdom of heaven," and '' kingdom of God," 
are frequently used in the New Testament. There 
is also several times introduced the expression '' the 
kingdom of Christ," or its equivalent. Tiiese three 
phrases have the same general import. 

The meaning and phraseology are brought forward 
into the New Testament from the Old. And they 
mean the spiritual kingdom of the Messiah. Many 
of the Jews had attributed to this reign of Christ 
a personal, civil, and temporal character. He was to 
be king of tlie Jews, visible, triumphant, and glo- 
rious, above all the glories that attach to any earthly 
monarch. But the more devout Jews, as Zacharias 
and Simeon, Anna the prophetess, and Joseph,^ had 
the spiritual, and what is now common view, of the 
reign of Christ. It was to be a reign without any 
civil organization or geographical limits. And, so 
far as it had any visible embodiment, it was merely 
as a means of showing its spiritual, religious, and 
heavenly origin and character. The true nature of 

1 Luke i. 67, ii. 25, 36, xxiii. 50-51. 
11* 125 



126 THE CHUECH AXD HER CHILDREN. 

this Ivingdom, St. Paul defines when he says, " The 
kingdom of God is not meat and drink, but righteous- 
ness and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost." And 
herein he but follows the teaching: of the Kingf him- 
self: "The kingdom of God cometh not with out- 
ward show. Neither shall they say, Lo, here I or, Lo, 
there ! For, behold, the kingdom of God is within 
Tou." Hence those words to Nicodemus, and re- 
peated so emphatically : '* Verily, verily, I say unto 
thee, except a man be born of water, and of the 
Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.' 

The only external and visible manifestation of this 
kingdom, as an organization on earth, the Saviour 
set forth in the Church. Into it he designed to 
gather his friends, followers, and subjects. His peo- 
ple, as distinct from those of any other kingdom or 
prince, were to be embodied in this holy community. 
It is the only visible constittition of a kingdom that 
he has here. It is, under a modified and Christian- 
ized form, the continuation, from the days of pat- 
riarchs and prophets, of the visible gathering and 
manifestation of the people of God. 

We are to bear in mind that the only kinofdom 
that God has attempted to establish in this world, 
since the apostacj^ is Messianic. It stands on tlie 
theory and work of Redemption. Christ, as its glo- 
rious Head, commenced its organization in that firet 
promise to our fallen parents. And the production 
of a people, from age to age. to serve him, was but 
giving a practical and visible effect to the purpose 
and plan of a spiritual kingdom on earth. And the 
Saviour declares this whole truth, when he says. 



CHRIST AND THE CHILDKEN^. 127 

" He that is not with me is against me, and he that 
gathereth not with me scattereth abroad." Herein 
he claims to himself a party and a leadership in it, 
and at the same time lie classes all others in a party 
opposed to him. And these two parties exhaust the 
human family. 

This party, this kingdom of Christ, has been one 
and the same in all time hitherto. In the ages of 
patriarchs and prophets, during those many centuries 
before Christ, all who belonged to his partj% to this 
" kingdom of God," were aggregated in the Church 
of God. The Church had not then that sharply de- 
fined spiritual border which we now assign to a par- 
ticular and local Church. It had many nominal, as 
well as actual believers, wise and foolish yhgins, 
tares and wheat. 

Such was the nature, composition, and visible mani- 
festation of " the kingdom of God," when they 
brought 5^oung children to Christ. We are now 
to remember that these children, thus brought to 
the Saviour, were Jewish children, and so cliurch- 
members. They were nominally members of the 
kingdom of God. As such Christ owns them, and 
defends their privilege and right to be brought 
to him, as the real Head of that kingdom, for his 
blessing. We have no evidence that these children 
were peculiar for any spiritual traits, or were after 
any manner different from the thousands of others in 
the region, that they were thus brought to Ciirist. 
There is no evidence that they were regenerated 
children, or had any thing more to commend them to 
the favor of the Saviour than the common amiabili- 



128 THE CHURCH AND HER CHH^DREN. 

ties of childhood, excepting their relation to this 
'' kinoxlom." 

They were Jewish children, and so members of the 
Church, according to its Abrahamic constitution, and 
the uniform practice of God's ancient people. This 
membership the Saviour recognizes and declares, 
when he says, '^ Of such is the kingdom of heaven." 
'' As the only visible kingdom of God on earth, its 
terms of membership include these, and they should 
not be withheld from my notice and favor, the only 
visible Head of this kingdom on earth." And when 
his disciples rebuked those who brought them '' he 
was much displeased." It was an interference with 
the relations that God had constituted between his 
kingdom and the little children, that he did not 
like. And he rebuked it. Such an exclusion of the 
children of believers from immemorial Church privi- 
leges merited his rebuke ; and he gave it. 

Some have supposed that the Saviour is here 
speaking of the heavenly kingdom, or state of the 
blessed in glory. But, as ordinary children, could he 
make this affirmation of them ? Or could he say 
that others should enter heaven who were like these 
children, when at the time these children may have 
been destitute of the distinguishing mark that quali- 
fies for heaven, namely,- the new heart ? 

If, however, he does here declare their certainty of 
membership in the kingdom of glory, much more 
may we suppose he would allow their membership in 
his kingdom, or Church, on earth. 

Others have supposed that the Saviour did not 
mtend to teach that these children were actually 



CHRIST AND THE CHILDREN. 129 

members of liis kingdom, but only that adults who 
have qualities like them could be members. But 
can Ave suppose that adults would be admitted to 
membership because they resembled children in cer- 
tain particulars, while the children themselves would 
be excluded? Likeness to a child the ground of 
admission, and the child itself denied ? We see no 
reason for this ; nor do we believe that the Saviour 
meant to teach such a principle. The kingdom of 
heaven, he says, has in it such persons as these. 

Moreover, that the children themselves were to be 
included in the membership is evident from the use 
of the word rendered " of such," — roov yaQ roiovzcov. It 
includes the person or thing referred to, as a speci- 
men or representative of a class. A few cases will 
make this evident. '' Whoso shall receive one such 
little child in my name receiveth me : " ^ here the 
little child, whom others must be like to enter the 
kingdom of heaven, is itself received of Christ. 
" And with many such parables spake he the Avord 
unto them : " ^ Here " such parables " refers to those 
just spoken, and so includes them. '' The hour 
Cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall 
worship the Father in spirit and in truth ; for the 
Father seeketh such to worship him : " ^ here " such " 
refers to the true worshippers mentioned, who are 
of course included. '' Ye rejoice in your boastings : 
all such rejoicing is evil : " ^ this boasting specified 
is evil, and every other like it. Demetrius the 
silversmith called the craftsmen together '' with the 

2 Matt, xviii. 5. ^ Mark iv. 33. 4 joim iv. 23. ^ James iv. 16. 



130 THE CHCTECH AND HER CHILDEEN. 

workmen of like [such] occupation : " ^ here his 
own and their occupations are included as branches 
of the one business of making shrines for Diana. 
These cases of illustration might be very much 
multiplied, showing that the words " of such " in- 
clude the person or thing in question, as well as 
those similar. And so we conclude, that, whatever 
the kingdom or membership obtained bj^ those who 
are like little children, these children obtain the same. 
They are included in the favor that adults obtain by 
being like them. 

» Acts xix. 25. 



CHAPTER XVL 



THE SILENCE OF CHRIST. 



THE ancient Church of God embraced the chil- 
dren of its members. From Abraham to Christ 
this was a principle and a practice. Since the most 
of its members entered it in infancy, it was a body, 
primarily, of children. They grew up in it ; and the 
waste made by death was repaired by their continual 
addition. 

Suppose, now, that this principle and usage are to 
be changed in the Christian form of the Church ; that 
children are to be excluded, and only adults admitted : 
would the Saviour have so insisted on their member- 
ship in it, as has been shown in the last chapter ? 
He is among a Jewish population, and before a 
Jewish audience, who, with their households, are 
members of the Church. If a chano^e is about to be 
made in the basis of membership, they are greatly 
concerned to know it. So radical a reconstruction 
of its constitution about to be made, and the relations 
of children to it about to be so totally changed, 
would the Saviour have said notliing to imply the 
change ? His treatment of the children in this case 
implies more than a silent approbation of the ancient 
custom concerning their membership. He virtually 

131 



132 THE CHURCH AND HER CHH^DREN. 

pleads for it. He remonstrates against their exclu- 
sion. 

If he were about to institute a new order of things 
in the Church, and omit the children, would he have 
neglected so fitting an opportunity to unfold or inti- 
mate the new policy ? 

And, after he had shown this marked disapproval 
of their overlooking the children, how could the 
disciples afterward assume to exclude them from 
their ancient right and place, without the most spe- 
cific command? If they were to be dropped in 
making up the membership of the Christian Church, 
the difference between it and the ancient Church 
would be very great. So radical and wide-reaching 
a change would be worthy of a particular specifica- 
tion and order from the Head of the Church. 

Yet this so fitting occasion for it goes by, not only 
without the intimation of any change, but with a 
treatment of children in their relations to the king- 
dom that must accord most fully with the high-toned 
conservatism of a Jew in the matter. If a new 
policy concerning children did come into the Church, 
this was the transition period. This occasion not 
only invited, but seemed to demand, an allusion to it. 
And, if the change were taking place, the silence of 
the Saviour on it at this time is unaccountable. But 
assume that no change was taldng place in their rela- 
tions to the Church, and his entire treatment of these 
children, and of those who opposed their presentation, 
is perfectly natural, and accordant with the policy 
and practice of ages. 

Consider the silence of our Lord on this great issue 



THE SILENCE OF CHRIST. 133 

in another case. When about to leave the world, he 
commands his apostles to go abroad, make disciples, 
and baptize them. We have already considered how 
they wonld naturally and necessarily understand this 
command. For their only knowledge of baptism was 
gained from its practice among the Jews, and in the in- 
troduction of proselytes to Judaism. And in this prac- 
tice the children of the adult proselyte were baptized 
as a matter of course. It was not an open question 
whether they should be. And so, with no qualifica- 
tions or exceptions in the command, they would nat- 
urally and necessarily, in baptizing an adult proselyte 
to Christianity, include in the rite his children, if he 
had any. 

Considering, therefore, this common practice in 
Judsea, when the Saviour gave his last command, and 
seeing the obvious and natural interpretation that the 
apostles would give to it, the omission of every qualify- 
ing or limiting clause in it touching children is sig- 
nificant. 

It may be said that the command limits the rite to 
believers. This is true, while yet it does not touch 
the question of the baptism of children. For prose- 
lyte baptism, without other instruction, was the 
model for the apostles. In administering it, the 
Jews were limited by command to baptize only 
believers in Judaism. This command to them was 
as strict as the command of Christ to the apostles to 
baptize only believers. Yet they always included 
the children of the believers when they baptized a 
proselyte. So the apostles would naturally do the 
same; and so the command to baptize only believ- 

12 



134 THE CHUBCH AND HER CHILDREN. 

ers is no limitation of the command touching chil- 
dren. 

The omission of the Saviour, therefore, to qualify or 
limit the command by some reference for the exclu- 
sion of children is a very emphatic omission. The 
inference, in the circumstances, that they would be 
included unless specifically excluded, becomes an 
index to his purpose to retain for them the relation 
to the Church that they had had from time immemo- 
rial. If he said nothing to prevent an obvious con- 
clusion from known facts and common practices, then 
we must not turn aside from the obvious conckision 
that he desig^ned that inference to be drawn. For 
we must remember the common practice and rule of 
interpretation, — that changes, variations from usage, 
and not the continuance of a usage, call for remark. 
Silence leaves a rite or custom undisturbed in its 
continuance. Its modification, specially if it be 
radical, is what is spoken of. It is the new, not the 
old, that occasions remark. 

We revise some of the statutes of the State at 
each session of the legislature. The law or section of 
which nothing is said holds over with full force and 
without any allusion. The ancient and original 
statute concerning admissions to the Church of God 
provides for and requires the admission of the chil- 
dren of the adult member. In the transition period 
of this one Church from the old to the new dispensa- 
tion, the Lord Jesus Christ, the Head of the Church, 
revises this statute of admission so far as to make 
baptism take the place of circumcision : so, where 
the statute formerly read '' circumcise," it is changed 
to read ''baptize." 



THE SILEXCE OF CHRIST. 135 

Making no other change in the statute, what 
remains unchanged holds over with full force under 
the new dispensation ; and so the present divine 
law of admission provides for and requires the admis- 
sion of the children of the adult member, the silence 
of the lawgiver implying no change. 

Viewing, therefore, the common use made of bap- 
tism, when our Saviour took it up from among the Jews, 
and adopted it as the substitute for circumcision in 
the new dispensation, and regarding the views that 
the apostles must naturally and necessarily have had 
of their application of the rite under the last com- 
mand of Christ, we cannot but regard that command, 
thus given without qualification or limitation, as 
binding and intending to bind the apostles to the 
doctrine and practice of Infant Baptism. Previous 
practices in the Church, and those common and daily 
practices among the Jews, and all the attendant cir- 
cumstances, demand a specified omission and exclusion 
of the children, if they Avere to be omitted. The 
argument on this question demands that those who 
deny infant baptism should show where it is pro- 
hibited. All the facts we have adduced show that 
it comes as a matter of course from the circumstances 
of the times, and the command of our Lord. The 
children having been always included aforetime in 
God's Church economj^ if they are now to be cast 
out, in this transition from the old to the new dispen- 
sation, they who affirm it assume the burden of 
proof, and must show by what command or lawful 
inference they are rejected. It is Christ who says, 
" Forbid them not." 



CHAPTER XVII. 

THE POSITION OF THE APOSTLES. 

IN a scriptural inquiry concerning the doctrine and 
practice of infant baptism, it is very important 
to learn what was usage with the apostles. We now 
open this branch of the general subject ; and in 
doing this it is necessary to remember, wliile we 
proceed, a few facts. By keeping these facts before 
us, we shall place ourselves in the position and cir- 
cumstances of the apostles, and so be the better able 
to judge of their doctrine and practice in this thing. 

We must remember, then, that household baptism 
was a common practice in the times of the apostles, 
and among their own people the Jews, before the 
manifestation of the Christian Church. They grew 
up in the sight of this usage. The baptism of chil- 
dren was familiar to them from their own childhood. 
It was administered to the little ones of a proselyte 
as a matter of course. So, from the very source and 
practice whence they derived their ideas of baptism at 
all, they took also the idea, that, when it was applied 
to an adult believer in Judaism, it was also to be ap- 
plied to his children, so far as they could yet be re- 
garded as infants. 

We must also remember that they had no concep- 

136 



THE POSITION OF THE APOSTLES. 1S7 

tlon or expectation of a new Church. The ancient 
Church of God was to be continued as a matter of 
course. The gracious, promised, and prophesied 
time of its enlargement had come, when the Gentiles 
should flow unto it. Instead of any new tabernacle, 
Zion was to lengfthen her cords and strencrthen her 
stakes, and so enlarge the covering of her tent for all 
the nations. The old '' olive-tree " was to be pre- 
served, and Gentile grafts inserted. Even the Jewish 
limbs that had been broken off by unbelief were to 
be recovered, and '-' graffed into their . own olive- 
tree." ^ So in that first apostolic preaching, under 
the last commission, and in the first Christian revival, 
the promise of mercy for the latter days is interpreted 
to cover Jews. And when those three thousand, a 
mixed multitude of Jews " out of every nation under 
lieaven," received Christ and Christian baptism, and 
'' the same day were added unto them," — the com- 
pany of apostles and disciples, — they were those 
broken branches '' graffed into their own olive-tree 
again." These were the first professors of religion that 
the apostles received into the Church. And they were 
received into " their own olive-tree," the ancient, 
original Church of God. To this same body the 
apostles added all their other converts, Jewish and 
Gentile. To the Jew it was his own, the Jewish 
Church, and to the Gentile it was the Christian 
Church. So we see that both were but different 
names and dispensations of one and the same body. 
This Pentecostal revival and ingathering of con- 



1 Horn. xi. 17-24. 
12* 



138 THE CHURCH AND HEK CHILDKEN. 

verts was the time to constitute and set forth a new 
Church, if any such thing was to be ever done. This 
was the beginning, properly, of Christian preaching. 
Christian baptism, and Christian profession of re- 
ligion. But the three thousand converts went into 
''their own" Church, the ancient '' olive-tree " of 
God ; and all converts under the apostles followed 
them. So no new Church was ever constituted. 

Then we must remember, too, in this connection, 
that the children of believers were also included i^ 
this ancient Church. The apostles not only knew 
this to be universal practice, but that it was an essen- 
tial in the constitution and usage of the body. Nay, 
more: they knew that they themselves had come into 
it in their infancy. No peculiarity of the ancient 
Church was more marked than its infant member- 
ship. No condition of adult membership was more 
stringently enforced than this dedication of the chil- 
dren to God. A Jew esteemed few, if any, of his 
rights and privileges so precious and inalienable as 
the one to place his child within the sacred enclosure 
of the people of God. 

All this was well known to the apostles, as a law 
in Israel, and a univei^sal custom with the chosen of 
God. And these very apostles, who were still only 
Jews who had " found the Christ " and accepted 
him, had all the deep scriptural and traditional feel- 
ings and prejudices of a Jew on this question. 

This we must bear in mind while inquiring for 
their usage in Infant Baptism. At the same time 
we must bear in mind that the Saviour had given 
them, so far as the record shows, no intimation that 



THE POSITION OF THE APOSTLES. 139 

the relations of the children of believers to the 
Church were to be disturbed in the new dispensa- 
tion. 

Thus we see, that, if the policy was now to be in- 
troduced 01 overlooking and excluding children 
when their parents were admitted, it would be a 
radical, conspicuous, and wide-working change in the 
ancient order of things. 

Among other things, therefore, we must also re- 
member this : that so organic a change as the omission 
of the children, if it took place, must have become 
the topic of frequent remark. All will see that the 
change, if made, was very great. Prior to the con- 
stitution of any Church in this world, it would be an 
exceedingly broad question whether children should 
be recoo^nized or imiored. It is now a most sio^nifi- 
cant difference between two churches, so called, that 
one expects infant dedication, and the other refuses 
it. Much more would the violent change discarding 
it, when it had been universal practice, be a change 
provoking attention and remark. The apostles, still 
Jews, and laboring among their brethren, and as a 
first addition receiving so many of them, would, as a 
natural step and as a necessity, explain this marked 
rejection of their little ones. What conference, and 
collision often, on other points, with their ''kinsmen 
according to the flesh!" How repeated and con- 
tinuous, even in the Book of Acts, and how often in 
the Epistles, the allusion to controversies with the 
Jews ! Yet not once does an apostle drop a remark 
in the way of explanation or defence, concerning this 
supposed exclusion of the children from their ancient 
relations and most endeared privileges. 



140 THE CHURCH AND HER CHILDREN. 

Now, before coming to the inquiry what they said 
and did concerning the usage in question, can we 
presume on a universal and profound silence by them, 
while so radical a change in the theory and practice 
of the Church of God is taking place ? 

But, on the other hand, if no change were to take 
place in the relations of the children of believers to 
the Church, then very little if any remark would be 
called for or made concerninq" them. If the universal 
usage of more than nineteen hundred years were 
abrogated, the change might well create a sensation 
and discussion; and apostles would come to the de- 
fence. But the continuance of that usag^e would 
naturally be in comparative silence. What would 
there be in its continuance to call forth inquiry, ex- 
planation, or apology ? It is change, not the uniform 
and the stereotyped, that occasions remarks and dis- 
cussions. The sabbath is not mentioned for about 
four hundred years between the times of Joshua and 
of David. The continuance of the institution and 
its observance did not call for any remark on it. 
Circumcision is not mentioned for about eight hun- 
dred and fifty years between the times of Moses and 
of Jeremiah. The continuance and observance of the 
ceremony did not give occasion for any allusion to it. 
The daily and annual sacrifices in the temple for ages 
are not mentioned; but their interruption is faith- 
fully chronicled. 

So, if the relations of children to the Church are 
continued from patriarchial and prophetic through 
apostolic times, we should not expect to find much, 
if, indeed, any thing, said about it. The circum- 



THE POSITION OF THE APOSTLES. 141 

stances would not call for remark. Silence would 
be the most conclusive argument for the continu- 
ance of those relations. 

These, then, are the circumstances in which the 
apostles enter on their work under the last command 
of the Master. 

They are to labor for the extension of the ancient 
kingdom '' from sea to sea." The Jew is to be per- 
suaded that Jesus is the Christ, and so stand with 
Abraham indeed in his covenant relations. The 
Gentiles are to be led to accept the Messiah, and so 
come in as the children of Abraham, assured that, if 
they be Christ's, then are they Abraham's seed, and 
heirs according to the promise. They are not to dis- 
organize or destroy, but fulfil, like their Master ; not 
innovators, but restorers of the old paths. St. John 
is to preach the Messiah found, as Isaiah preached one 
to come ; and the two are to swell the ranks for the 
one and common communion. 



CHAPTER XVIII. 

nOTTSEHOLD BAPTISMS. 

THE last chapter puts us into the position of the 
apostles. Standing back there, we remember 
and feel with their experiences; we hear the final 
command of the Master with their understandings ; 
and we look forward to work by such ways and 
means as their circumstances would sug^wst. Now 
we are ready to go forward, and examine apostolic 
action in the matter under inquiry, as set forth in The 
Acts of the Apostles and in the Epistles. 

Their main effort appears to have been to convince 
men that Jesus of Nazareth was the Messiah, and 
that they should repent of sin, trust in him for sal- 
val:ion, and publicly confess him. 

To carry these points they urge their great argu- 
ments, and incur their great perils. To Jewish audi- 
ences and readers they argue these points from the 
Scriptures, showing that what they preach is but an 
unfolding and continuation of the faith of Abraham. 
In all this they say but little of those under adult or 
responsible years. 

The disposition of children, so far as their religious 
relations were concerned, seems to have been accord- 
ing to a settled and well-understood policy. It did 

142 



HOUSEHOLD BAPTISMS. 143 

not, apparently, call for modijScation, explanation, or 
defence. 

There is occasionally an allusion, incidentally 
made, that covers children ; but generally they re- 
main unnoticed, just as we may suppose they would 
under an ancient and universal usage. Hence the 
objection is of little account, that only three instances 
of household baptism are recorded in the New Testa- 
ment. Even if these three instances proved Infant 
Baptism, they would add but little to the force of 
the general argument. Children being always in- 
cluded in the Church before, and being brought 
always by baptism into Israel with the proselyte 
parent, and being reckoned by Christ as members of 
his kingdom, and no exception of them being made 
in his command to make continued additions by bap- 
tism, it is to be held that they continued to be reck- 
oned and gathered with the believing and professing 
parents. So, the greater the silence in the New 
Testament concerning them, the stronger the infer- 
ence that their relations have not been changed. 
Hence the great mistake of those who reject house- 
hold consecration because there is no positive com- 
mand for it m the New Testament. It had been 
commanded and practised among the people of God 
for nineteen hundred years. In a continuation of 
the doctrines and principles and Church-organization 
that had prevailed for nineteen centuries, why de- 
mand a specific command for one only of the many 
items continued ? As well demand that the ten com- 
mandments must be re-enacted in order to be in 
force under the Christian dispensation. 



14J: THE CHURCH AND HEE. CHILDREN, 

So, if those of the opposing theory, with much spe- 
cial labor, seem to show that children were not of 
necessity included in the three cases of household bap- 
tism, it makes nothing against the main argument for 
the institution. The specific mention of infant baptism 
by the apostles is no more necessary to complete the 
proof of it, than the mention of the sabbath during 
those four hundred j^ears between Joshua and David, 
or the mention of circumcision durino; those eioiit 
hundred and fifty years between Moses and Jeremiah, 
is necessary to prove the continued observance of 
those institutions. The only thing that required a 
specific mention and assertion in all this matter was 
the change of seal from circumcision to baptism. 
This change was made and practised during the life 
of the Saviour, and finally and specially commanded 
when he said, '' Go teach all nations, baptizing," 
instead of circumcising as aforetime. 

The explanation, therefore, of these three cases of 
household baptism may be safely passed by as a mat- 
ter of indifference. We can afford to leave them to 
the free use of those Avho deny the ordinance in 
question, if they will use them fairly. The extrem- 
est favorable construction for themselves that they 
can put on them is that children are not mentioned 
in them ; and, as they are not absolutely, universally, 
and invariably included under the word '' household," 
there may have been none in these three households. 

But this does not prove that there were in them 
no children ; nor may they press their use so far as 
this. If they ask us for the family register of Lydia 
and of the jailer and of Stephanas, to show the 



HOUSEHOLD BAPTISMS. 145 

names and ages of children there, before we can use 
these cases to establish the practice of infant baptism, 
we, in turn, ask of them those registers to show that 
there were no children, before they urge the cases 
against us. So the whole argument from these cases 
is an argument from probabilities. Before dismiss- 
ing it, let us look at it a moment in this light. What 
is probable, — that there were or were not children in 
any one of those three households ? As a general rule, 
what is the fact as to finding or not finding children 
in a " household " or family ? And, according to ec- 
clesiastical law and usage in the land and times of 
these three cases, we reckon females of twelve years 
and a day, and males of thirteen years and a day, and 
under, as children. If any one will take the house- 
holds or families in any ward, district, or village with 
which he is familiar, he will find that a large majority 
of them have children under twelve and thirteen 
years. An investigation of facts will show this. If the 
inquiry be raised concerning an unknown family, the 
probabilities are altogether in favor of the hypothesis 
that children will be found in it. These general ob- 
servations and impressions may be confirmed by facts 
from census returns. In England, in 1837, 42,203 
families, under the head of ^' husband and wife," 
were taken in order, that is, as they came in going 
from house to house. Of these, 30,256 had children.^ 
This fact shows children in nearly two-thirds of the 
families. When the census of New York was taken in 
1865, it was taken by families, with special reference 



1 United-States Census, 1850: Compend. p. 101. 
13 



146 THE CHUKCH AND HEU CHILDREN. 

to children. To each of the Avomen who were or 
had been married, of whom there were 842,562, the 
question was put, whether she had had children ; 
and only 115,252 answered in the negative. In this 
case six families out of every seven had had children ; 
but no registry shows what proportion had them yet 
under the age of thirteen. 

Now, as the very term " household " or family im- 
plies the marriage relation, the probability is strong 
(three to four and six to seven, according to the above 
facts), that, in either one of the three cases before us 
taken separately, there were children. In the absence 
of any positive proof either way, this is a reasonable 
conclusion. If we take the three cases together, the 
f)robability rises very much, that among them there 
was at least one family having children. So, while 
the opponents of this institution incline to make 
much of these three cases, we specially mark the fact, 
that the strens^th of their arg^ument from them lies 
in the very limited number of cases. A large num- 
ber of such instances would increase the probability to 
a certainty, that there must have been children among 
them. How doubtful an argument is that whose 
weakness is increased with the increase of the facts 
on which it professes to be based ! In ordinary argu- 
ment, the more facts bearing on the point the better. 
But here the safety of the conclusion sought lies in 
the fewness of the data. Indeed, it is an extraordi- 
nary argument and most singular logic that so uses 
three facts to establish a point where three times three 
would disprove it beyond a reasonable doubt. But 
we must not yet take our leave of the ''household " 



HOUSEHOLD BAPTISMS. 147 

of Lydia and of the jailer and of Stephanas. The 
use of this word '•'• household " in the Scriptures has 
an important bearing in balancing the probabilities 
on this question. The original word here translated 
"household" is the only word in New-Testament 
Greek by which one could express the idea of a 
famil}^, including parents and children ; and Avhere 
that idea is expressed this word is used. So, when 
Paul is pointing out to Timothy the qualifications for 
a bishop, he says, " One that ruleth well his own 
house, having his children in subjection." Here chil- 
dren are included in the w^ord ''house," or household, 
as is evident from the last clause of the quotation. 
When God commanded Noah to enter the ark with 
all his '' house,'' the command, as we know, included 
his children. When the Seventy made a Greek trans- 
lation of the Old Testament about two hundred and 
eighty years before Christ, they used this same Greek 
word to express the family. The Septuagint furnishes 
very many instances of this ; and very likely a care- 
ful examination would show a uniformity of use by 
them of this same word. An extensive research on 
this point is mentioned by Taylor, the editor of Cal- 
met's Bible Dictionarj^, and shows a conclusive re- 
sult. He reports the examination of about three 
hundred instances of the use of this word as ap- 
plied to persons, all which denoted a family with 
children- 
There is one other item of evidence on the import 
of • the word ''household," that should here be 

2 See Apostolic Baptism, by C. Taylor; speciaUy on the uses of 
olKog and olKca. 



118 THE CHUECH AND HER CHILDREN. 

noticed. In the first Christian century, a translation 
of the Kew Testament was made into the Old Syriac 
or Peshito. This version uses the phrase or idiom 
'' sons of the house " for household. So in the pas- 
sage concerning Lydia it reads, '* And when she was 
baptized, and the sons of her house." The same is 
said of the exemplary wife in Prov. xxxi. 15, 21 : 
'^ She riseth also while it is yet night, and giveth 
meat to the sons of her house " [household]. " She 
is not afraid of the snow for the sons of her house '' 
[household]. So also in Eccl. ii. 7 : ''I got me ser- 
vants and maidens, and sons of mv house were born 
to me." In the authorized version it reads, '' And I 
had servants born in my house." Here the reference 
is beyond question. 

Of this translation certain thino^s are to be noted 
that give it a peculiar weight of influence. It w^as 
completed before the close of the first century, or 
very early in the second. Then the Peshito trans- 
lator or translators of the New Testament had proba- 
bly known some of the apostles personally: they 
lived in the very region where the apostles labored. 
Being, then, on the ground of their labors, if not in 
the time, and making this translation for those who 
had learned to love the Christian Scriptures, those 
translating had two great advantages, — a knowledge 
of apostolic custom as to " household " baptism, and 
a knowledge of the import of the word as used by 
the apostles and rendered " household." No writer, 
it would seem, could be better situated to understand 
the practice, and translate the language in question. 
And of Lydia and her household they say in trans- 



HOUSEHOLD BAPTISMS. 149 

lation, " When she was baptized, and the sons of her 
house." 

With a concluding remark we here take leave of 
the three " households." The AYeight of argument 
turns on the meaning of the Greek word orAog^ ren- 
dered ''house" and ''household." Fortunately we 
have two perfectly reliable witnesses on its import. 
Three hundred cases of Hebrew words denoting a 
family with children, fifty of them known to include 
children, are rendered in the Septuagint by orAog, 
This witness testifies what meaning went into the 
word. A translator of the first Christian century, 
turning the New Testament into Syriac, translates the 
word oi'Aog " sons of the house." This witness 
testifies what meaning came out of the word. 

13* 



CHAPTER XIX. 

SUIMMABY OF THE BIBLICAL ABGUISIENT. 

"YTT^E are now about to pass to another branch of 
VV this subject. It may be well to review the 
ground passed over, and see what progress we have 
made, and what positions we have obtained. 

We have found that God constituted a visible 
church in the Abrahamic covenant ; and w^e fail of 
any Scripture evidence to show that either He or his 
prophets, Christ or his apostles, ever constituted any 
other. The forms and ceremonies pertaining to its 
management and worship varied more or less under 
different dispensations ; but the organic structure of 
the one universal Church of God remained un- 
changed. In it the apostles were members ; and to 
it they united their converts, as the proplietic incom- 
ing of the Gentiles. We have seen, too, that the pa- 
triarchal and apostolic creed required for admission 
was one and the same, — faith in Christ. 

Under the ancient regime the additions were made 
by families, so far as the adults coming in had fami- 
lies. So the two leadinsr features in the Abrahamic 
Church were Christ as the body of doctrine, and the 
Family as the body of membership. We have found 
that Circumcision and Baptism held the same office, 

150 



SUMMARY OF THE BIBLICAL AUGUMENT. 151 

and rendered the same service, as ushers at the door 
of the Church. 

It has been seen, too, that, while the former disap- 
peared in the times of the apostles, the latter ap- 
peared, filling its place. And, while there is on record 
no divine command for this substitution of one for 
the other, it has been shown that an apostolic practice 
is as authoritative as a specific divine command ; since 
the apostles were in the enjoj^ment of the promise 
that the Holy Ghost should teach them all things, 
and bring to their remembrance what Christ had said 
to them. In such circumstances we may well suppose 
that the specific command of Christ, that baptism 
should be substituted for circumcision, was left out 
of the record, and among those '^ many other things 
which Jesus did, the which, if they should be written 
every one, I suppose that even the world itself could 
not contain the books that should be written." 

In the course of our inquiry we have ascertained 
that household baptism was common among the Jews 
in the times of our I^ord, and was an invariable rite 
for the families of Gentile proselytes. So, in the last 
great command of Christ to his apostles, baptism had 
no strange or unusual import, but was defined by tradi- 
tional and common usage. Therefore, if qualification 
was not made by Christ to the contrary, the apostles 
would naturally go forth baptizing families into Chris- 
tianity, just as the Jews from time immemorial had 
been baptizing Gentile families into Judaism. Hence 
the rare mention of household baptism by the apos- 
tles — only three cases — is a very natural omission. 
A common usage, and anquestioned, is not of a nature 



152 THE CHURCH AND HER CHH^DREN. 

to call forth remark and record, specially when the 
annals are as brief as the apostolic. 

Tliongh positive proof is wanting in the three cases 
recorded, to show that there were or were not chil- 
dren under twelve years, and so subjects for infant 
baptism, in those families, still the presumption is 
very strong that there were ; for taking society as it 
is constituted, and going from house to house, two- 
thirds if not three-fourths of the households would 
be found to have members under twelve years of 
age. 

While it is objected that the command is to baptize 
only believers, we have found also that the command 
was to circumcise only believers ; and, as the children 
were included in the command for circumcision, so 
they may be included in the command for baptism, 
by a fair construction of language, as well as by a 
consideration of that proselyte usage of baptism on 
which the Christian use of baptism sprung up. In- 
deed, the most of the objections to Infant Baptism — 
as that the rite is designed to be a seal of true piety, 
that the infant has no knowledge of its import and 
gives no assent to it, that it deprives one of the privi- 
lege of making a profession of religion for himself, 
and many other such objections — lie with equal force 
against the rite of circumcision. The objections 
over-reach in their design, and break in on the econo- 
my of God for his Church as set forth in the Old 
Testament. 

Thus far we have brought the argument, extending 
it through apostolic times. It is now a matter of first 
importance among auxiliary evidences, to know what 



SUMMABY OF THE BIBLICAL ARGUMENT. 153 

was tlie practice in those churches founded by the 
apostles, in the first centuries of the Christian era. 
We now, therefore, pass to the Historical Argument 
for Infant Baptism. 



CHAPTER XX. 

THE HISTORICAL AEQUMENT OPENED. 

IN the light and strength of the argument, as thus 
far developed, let us assume, yet only for the time 
being, that the Christian Church moved off from 
apostolic times into the centuries, with this usage of 
infant consecration in common practice. Wherever, 
in the cities of the East, a branch of the Church was 
established, let us, for a little, presume that this rite 
came into practice. We will not declare that it was 
so: we will only assume it, and for this reason, that 
any historical evidence bearing on the question may 
appear in its true circumstances, and have its due 
weight. Unless the rite is wholly a forgery, and was 
foisted into the Church among the corruptions of 
early times, its practice must have been common in 
the two and three opening centuries of the Christian 
era. If a practice at all, it was probably general and 
without controversy. Only as an innovation would 
it be likely to be discussed. 

Then, if practised thus as a rite not to be ques- 
tioned, we should not look to find much said concern- 
ing it by the writers of those times. It would stand 
among the acts that were performed as a matter of 
course, and so called for remark or allusion but sel- 

154 



THE HISTORICAL ARGUMENT OPENED. 155 

dom, and then incidentally, as the keeping of the 
sabbath and circumcision are not mentioned for cen- 
turies in Jewish histoiy. 

A remark of Augustine may be quoted in this 
place as pertinent and illustrative. Pelagius, in the 
great controversy occasioned by his denial of the doc- 
trine of original sin, accused Augustine of originat- 
ing the doctrine, and, as proof, affirmed that nothing 
was said or heard of it in the earlier Church. Au- 
gustine aptly replies, " What need is there that we 
should examine the works of those who lived before 
this heresy [the Pelagian] arose, and so had no occa- 
sion to be employed in solving the difficult question ? 
— which no doubt they would have done, if they had 
been compelled to reply to such things." 

If no controversy should be raised concerning the 
authority of the rite, and no sect spring up denying 
it, the fact of its performance, or the question as to 
the proper subject for it, might naturally pass through 
the first three centuries with scarcely an allusion to 
it by the writers of those times. The scantiness of 
historical reference, therefore, to this topic, in those 
early times, is no necessary evidence against the prac- 
tice of the ordinance. 

It is a singular and interesting fact, as we shall see, 
that, so soon as there is any occasion to speak on this 
subject, the allusions and statements are full, free, 
and unqualified, as if it w^ere an ordinance received 
from the apostolic fathers, always approved, and 
generally observed. When the rite first became, by 
incident, a subject of controversy in the Church, 
even those most interested to deny its apostolical 



156 THE CHURCH AND HER CHILDREN". 

practice, that they might the better defend them- 
selves in certain departures from the common faith, 
make no intimation that it is a rite of human inven- 
tion. The first controversial opening on the subject is 
plenary as to the fact of the practice of the rite, 
leaving us to conclude that at any time during the 
preceding period of silence there would have been 
the same fulness of statement if occasion had de- 
manded. 

It may not seem needful to cite witnesses to the 
general prevalence of this ordinance later than A.D. 
412, when Augustine opened the Pelagian contro- 
versy. Yet it is so convenient and pertinent to intro- 
duce here certain from Europe and Asia and Africa, 
— men eminent and of wide scholarship and influ- 
ence in their day, — that it is not easy to refrain. It 
is the more willingly done, because it does not seem 
to be as well known as it should, how full of evidence 
on this point the early Church history is. 

Let us begin, therefore, a few years later than A.D. 
412, and work backward among the Christian fathers, 
to a point as near to the times of the apostles as we 
can find any one of them speaking on this subject of 
Infant Baptism. 

Vincent of Lerins flourished as a presbyter and 
monk about A.D. 430, and has preserved his name 
by an attack on Augustine, that gave occasion for 
that great man to write his four books Concerning 
the Soul and its Origin. Vincent had his island home 
in the Mediterranean, a little off the coast of France, 
as his title indicates. We are indebted to Augustine 
for the words of Vincent on the baptism of infants : — 



THE HISTORICAL ARGUMENT OPENED. 157 

" We must consider those infants, who, being des- 
tined to baptism in the present life, are prevented by 
death before they are regenerated in Christ. ... I 
dare to affirm that they may obtain the forgiveness 
of original sin, though they may not be admitted to 
heaven itself : as to the confessing but not baptized 
thief the Lord granted not heaven, but paradise." ^ 

Here Vincent advances the theory that baptism is 
necessary to a full salvation, the unbaptized infant 
prevented from the intended rite being admitted 
only to the intermediate state of paradise. That this 
is his theory is evident from his second book, where 
he supports his reference to the thief by the current 
tradition of Dinocrates, a boy of seven years, and 
his sister, who, being heathen children, could not 
obtain baptism, and so gained only paradise.^ 

We pass from Southern Europe to Mesopotamia. 
Theodoret, who Avas eminent in his work about A.D. 
420, a pupil of Chrysostom, and bishop of Cyrus on 
the Euphrates, is said to have had there at one time 
the charge of eight hundred churches. He was a 
distinguished writer. '' His learning," says Mosheim, 
''was great, his genius good, and his productions 
among the best of the age." He wrote Commen- 
taries on the Old Testament, and on the Pauline 



1 "Habendam dicinins de infantibns istius modi rationem, qui 
pr?edestinati baptismo vit^s praesentis, antequani renascuutur in 
Cliristo, prfeveiiiuntur occiduo. . . . Ansim dicere istos pervenire 
posse ad originaliiim indiilgentiam peccatoriiin, non tanien ut 
cceleste inducantur in regnuiu. Siciiti latroni confesso quidem, sed 
non baptizato, Doniinns non ccelorum regniini tribuit, sed para- 
disnm." — Apud August., De Anima, Lib. ii. 9, 10. 

2 Idem, Lib. i. 9, ii. 10, 12, iii. 9. 

14 



153 TETE CHFRCH AND HER CHILDREN. 

Epistles ; An Ecclesiastical Histoiy, covering the 
time from A.D. 320 to A.D. 427, which is a con- 
tinuation of Eusebius ; Five Books on the Existing 
Heresies ; The Lives of Thirty Eminent Monks ; 
Dialogues on the Trinit}" ; An Apology for Chris- 
tianity, in Twelve Books, besides miscellanies. He 
did a great work in confuting and converting the 
Marcionites, of whom he says he baptized ten thou- 
sand. Such a man was, of course, eminently fitted 
to speak on the usage of infant baptism in his times. 
He says, — 

" Baptism is not what the foolish Messalians call it, 
— only a razor that cuts off past sins, Avhich, indeed, it 
does. But, if it affects no more, why need we baptize 
infants, who are sinless ? " ^ 

This question of the learned Theodoret is direct 
and simple, and can leave no doubt in a candid mind 
that the rite we are considering was generally ob- 
served in his day. 

That we may take the widest range of the Chris- 
tian field, and gather evidence from extreme and 
opposite borders, to show the universality of this 
usage, let us pass now from the Euphrates to the 
Kile. 

Isidore of Pelusium was active and prominent in 
church affairs from A.D. 388 to A.D. 431. He 
devoted much of his very rigid monkish life to expo- 

3 Oi) yap 6>f ol (ppEvo[i7iafielQ MeaoaALavol vo/llI^ovgl, ^vpbv fiovov filfihTcu 
TO ^uTTTLafj-a rag TTpoyeysvjjfzivag iKpcupovfievov dfiapTcag : tovto yap £K 
'iiepiovGLag ;|^op^'^£rcM. E/ yap tovto fiovov epyov j/v tov (SairTia/LLaTog, avi9* 
OTOv Tu jSpeipT] iSaTZTL^ojitv ovdeno) ttjq afiapTiac yevod^eva : — Hceretic. Fa- 
hul. Lib. V. c. xviii. De Bap. 



THE HISTORICAL ARGUMENT OPENED. 139 

sitions of the Scriptures, in the form of Epistles. Of 
these he left over two thousand, "- of great value for 
the history of morals and exegesis," says Guericke, in 
his " Ancient Church." On the baptism of Infants 
Isidore thus speaks : — 

" You wrote me wishing to know why infants, being 
sinless, are baptized. It seems well for me to give 
you my reasons. Some, degrading the subject, say it 
is that they may have cleansed away that filth coming 
on human nature by the sin of Adam. I also think 
it does that ; but " &c. And he goes on to show that 
it also imparts many gifts and graces, constituting 
the subject a real child of God. ^ 

Jerome, who was baptized into the Church A.D. 
363, and died A.D. 420, was not involved in any con- 
troversy that required him to speak of this rite ; and 
so he refers to it but infrequently, if, indeed, more 
than once, and that incidentally, as he would liave re- 
ferred to the other sacrament common and unques- 
tioned. In his Letter to Leta, on the education of 
her daughter, he has this passage : — 

'' He who is a child and thinks as a child, till he 
arrives at the age of discretion, and Pythagoras's letter 
Y leads him to the divided way, has both his good 
and evil imputed to his parents; unless, indeed, jou 
assume that the children themselves are alone at fault, 
if they do not receive baptism, and that the sin is not 
to be charged on those who were unwilling to grant 



* 'ETTstSr^ yeypa(pe gov rj fieyaXovota (3ov7Mfiev7] fiaSelv 6ia ttjv alrlav rd, 
(Specjy^ ava/iupTTjra bvra (3anTL^£Tai, ktX. — IsiDORi Epistolarimiy Lib. iii. 
£pis. 195. 



160 THE CHURCH AND HER CHILDREN. 

it at that very time when those about to receive it 
were unable to object to it."^ 

Here the removal of the sins of infancy by baptism, 
according to the erring notion of the times, is clearly 
set forth, and is used to press parental responsibility 
on Leta. 

These four authorities are cited, — Vincent, Theodo- 
ret, Isidore, and Jerome, — partly to show the common 
use of the rite in question in their day, but mainly for 
another purpose. The authorities about to be quoted 
will cover and defend the ground fully that we claim, 
and will show that, in the later times of these four, the 
usage was universal. Yet these four make only single 
and isolated and incidental allusions to it. The main 
purpose, therefore, in quoting their meagre words, is 
to illustrate the fact that voluminous writers among 
the fathers have passed over this rite, when every- 
where in practice, with bare and solitary allusions 
only, when they had no occasion to refer to it con- 
troversially. A little earlier Augustine and Pela- 
gius are redundant in references, because under the 
rite, and related to it, great doctrines were in contro- 
versy between them. By and by we shall come again 
to church fathers comparatively silent on infant 
baptism, because it is not in controversy, directly or in- 
cidentally. This fact and illustration are specially com- 



5 " Qui autem parvuhis est et sapit ut parvnlns, donee ad annos 
sapieiitire veiiiat, et Pythagoras litera Y eum perducat ad biviuni, 
tarn bona ejus qnani mala parentibus imputantur; nisi forte existi- 
nias Christian or am filios, si baptisma non receperint ipsos tantum 
reos esse peccati, et non etiam scelus referri ad eos qui dare nolue- 
rint, maxime eo tempore quo contradicere non poterant qui accep- 
turi erant." — HiEiioxY:Rn, Eplstolce Sdectod^ Lib. ii., Ep. 15, adLietam. 



THE HISTORICAL ARGUMENT OPENED. 161 

mended to the consideration of those who would make 
so much against the existence of the rite in the early 
Church, from the silence of some of the church fathers. 
An historical argument based on historical silence may 
sometimes have a terrible recoil. If Capt. Cook 
makes no reference to sunrise in the Sandwich Islands, 
what is the inference ? 

14* 



CHAPTER XXL 

THE PELAGIAN CONTROVERSY, AND INFANT BAPTISM. 

THE Pelagian controversy furnished the first occa- 
sion for preachers and authors and councils in 
the Church to speak much and positively on this sub- 
ject. Allusions would of course be made incidentally ; 
and, when any heresy or schism arose involving this 
sacrament, the allusions would increase. But, till the 
heresy of Pelagius came abroad, and disputes arose 
over it, there was no good cause why much should be 
said on this common and quiet and universal ordi- 
nance. That controversy arose in this way. 

Pelagius, a British monk, being resident at Rome 
about A.D. 410, gave head and name to the heresy. 
The common doctrine of the Church at that time on 
original sin was, that the first sin of Adam was im- 
puted to his entire posterity by the appointment of 
God, and that the effects of it were transmitted to all 
his race in such a way that they were born without 
any original righteousness, and under sentence of 
death, and liable to an eternal separation from God. 
Pelagius denied the doctrine of original sin in this 
sense ; and with him as leaders in the denial and op- 
position were Coelestius a presbyter, and Julian an 
Italian bishop. 

162 



THE PELAGIAN CONTROVERSY. 163 

In opposition to the common doctrine, Pelagius 
taught that sinning in Adam did not mean contracting 
sin by birth in the race of Adam, but only a sin of imi- 
tation. " How can one be esteemed guilty of the sin," 
he saj^s, " which he knows he did not commit? If it 
is not his own, it is compulsory, but if his own, volun- 
tary ; and if voluntary, it can be avoided." ^ 

In his exposition of the Epistle to the Romajis, he 
says, '' The transgression of Adam did not injure 
those not sinning, as the righteousness of Christ does 
not help those not trusting in him." " If baptism 
washes awaj^ that old sin, those born of baptized 
parents ought to be free from all sin ; for they could 
not impart to their children what they did not them- 
selves possess." Pelagius goes on to say, that, if the 
soul of the new-born babe is not by propagation, but 
creation, "• it would be very unjust that a soul born 
to-day, and not from the stock of Adam [^)ion ex 
massd Adce]^ should be punished for that ancient sin ; 
and that it cannot be that God, who forgives one's 
own sins, should impute to him the sins of another." 

In his book on Free Will, he says, '' Every thing 
good or ill in us was not born in us, but done by ns. 
We are born capable of becoming good or evil, but 
not with those qualities. By birth we are equally 
wantinsc holiness and sin." Auofustine savs Coeles- 
tins taught that " the sin of Adam hurt no one but 
himself; '^ and that Julian held that " at the time of 
our birth our nature is rich in innocence," a.nd that 
" if one be charged with guilt, the charge must lie 

1 De Natura^ apud August. 



164 THE CHURCH AND HER CHILDREN. 

against his conduct, not his birth." And much more 
to the same import from the three Pelagian leaders. 

All this was foreign to the creed of the Church, as 
then held ; and, to defend the ancient faith against 
these innovations, Augustine gave himself up, and for 
twenty years was engaged in the struggle. Indeed, 
he died in the full armor of l3attle, A.D. 430. 

In opposing these views, Augustine urged many 
points with his great and varied ability ; but we are 
concerned now wdth only one line of his argument. 
Nor is it a question now with us who was right, on 
the doctrine of original sin ; nor yet whether the 
design and office of baptism were Scripturally appre- 
hended. Pelagius agreed fully with the Church in the 
practice of infant baptism ; but denied original sin, 
which, in the Church view, baptism was supposed to 
wash away. This discrepancy Augustine pressed on 
him energetically ; and it is in the attack and defence 
at this point that the Pelagian controversy throws so 
much light on the question we are investigating. In 
making quotations from the parties in dispute, we 
shall so mingle them chronologically as will in the 
best and briefest way show the mind of the Church 
on our subject at that period, A.D. 410-430. 

It was A.D. 412 that Augustine wrote a book, the 
aim of which was to show that infants lie under the 
guilt of original sin. Among the proofs, he cites their 
baptism. To the objection that they are baptized, not 
for the washing away of sin, but that they may be 
made heirs of heaven, he replies, — 

'' If they be questioned whether unbaptized infants, 
and not yet members of the kingdom, come to an 



THE PELAGIAN CONTROYERSY. 165 

eternal salvation in the resurrection of the just, they 
labor severely, but find no escape. For what Chris- 
tian can bear the saying that any one can enter into 
eternal salvation who has not been regenerated in 
Christ, which He has willed to be done by baptism ? " ^ 

Being sternly pressed for a reason for baptizing 
infants, if not guilty of original sin, some of the Pela- 
gians ventured to give the heathen notion of pre- 
existence, and that for sins committed there they are 
now baptized. If Pelagius could have denied the 
apostolical authority of the ordinance, would he not 
sooner have done it, than resort to so strange and for- 
lorn a reason ? This desperate plunge for relief shows 
us how this rite bore as a proof of the doctrine of 
original sin. Nothing urged against Pelagius, for deny- 
ing this doctrine, gave him so much trouble in reply 
as the common use of baptism. If it had been pos- 
sible, how soon would he have broken the very centre 
of opposition, by showing that the rite was an inno- 
vation and corruption in the Church ! But though so 
tempted to make this denial of its origin, and so well 
read in the history of the Church through the three 
centuries between him and the apostles, he did not 
do it. His knowledge of Church history, and of the use 
of the rite, evidently prevented him. Augustine 
sees the dilemma of his opponents, and avails himself 
of it vigorously. 

'' Moreover, because thev concede that infants must 



2 " Qnis enim Cliristiaiiorum ferat, cura dicitiir ad seternam salutem 
posse qiiemquam pervenire, si non renascatur in Cliristo, quod per 
baptismiim iieri voluit ? " — De Peccatoru7n Meritis et Remissione, 
Lib. i.j c. xviii. 



166 THE CHUBCH AND HER CHH^DHEN. 

be baptized, since they cannot resist the authority of 
the Church universal, no doubt derived from the Lord 
and apostles," &c.^ 

And ill this same treatise, concerning The Guilt and 
Forgiveness of Sins, he makes still more and weighty 
declarations : "The entire Church has, from ancient 
times, firmly held that the infants of believers do secure 
the pardon of original sin by the baptism of Christ."^ 

"I do not remember to have heard any thing to the 
contrary from Christians who receive either Testa- 
ment, in the catholic Church or in any heresy or 
schism. I do not remember to have read anv thins^ to 
the contrary among those Avriting on these subjects, 
whom I have examined, — writers who have followed 
the canonical Scriptures, or believed they should be 
followed, or wished them to be believed."^ 

These are very weighty sayings. He had never met 
a Christian, catholic or heretic, nor read any author, 
who thought otherwise than that the infants of believ- 
ers are baptized for the forgiveness of sin. He says 
this who was as well fitted, probably, as any man, 
living then or since, to speak of the doctrines and. 



3 "Porro quid parvulos baptizandos esse concedunt, qui contra 
auctoritatein universae ecclesi?e, procul dubio per Dominum et 
apostolos traditam, venire non possunt," &c. — jDo., Lib. i., c. xxvi. 

4 "Antiquitus universa ecclesia retineret, fideles parvulos origi- 
iialis peccati remissionem per Cbristi baptisnium consecutos," — Lib. 
iii., 4. 

5 "Non memini me aliud audivisse a Christianis, qui utruinque 
accipiunt Testamentum, non solum in catliolica ecclesia, verum 
etiam in qualibet b^eresi vel scliismate constitutis : non memini me 
aliud legisse apud eos, quos de his rebus aliquid scribentes legero 
potui, qui Scripturas canonicas sequerentur, vel sequi se crederent, 
credive voluissent." — Lib. iii., 6. 



THE PELAGIAN CONTEOVEESY. 167 

customs of the Cliurcli iu the three centuries between 
him and the apostles. 

Augustine continues his argument, folloAving Pela- 
gius into that middle state, limhus puerorum^ where 
the latter felt constrained to locate children Avho died 
"unbaptized, and from which only baptism could keep 
them. This state and place was paradise, but not 
heaven. Augustine says, — 

" Suppose an infant. If he be with Christ already, 
why baptize him ? If he be baptized, that he may be 
with Christ, which is the fact, then it is evident that 
he is not with Christ before he is baptized." ^ 

Near the close of A.D. 415, a council of fourteen 
bishops, lield at Diospolis, brought Pelagius to trial, 
on several charges. Among them, he was accused of 
believing '^ that infants unbaptized may have eternal 
life." This tenet he rejected, and agreed, though 
equivocally, with the bishops in the formula, 'Hhat 
unbaptized infants will not only fail of the kingdom 
of heaven, but of eternal life also." ^ 

And so Pelagius gave up not only his theory of 
infant salvation without baptism, but also that sup- 
plemental or relief theory of a middle place for those 
who had missed of baptism. This was a great con- 
cession for him ; for, as the baptism of infants was 



6 " Constitue igitur qnemlibet parvxilnm : si jam cum Christo est, 
utquid baptizatiir ? Si antem, quod liabet Veritas, ideo baptizatnr, 
ut sit cum Christo, adversiis Christum est, profecto non haptizatus 
non est cum Christo." — Lib. i, c. xxviii. 

"* "Infantes, etiam si non baptizentur, habere vitam aeternam. 
. . . Infantes non baptizati, non sohim regnum coelorum, verum 
etiam vitam ^ternam habere non possint." — Augusti., Epis, ad 
Faulinurn, clxxxvi., alias cvi. 



168 THE CHUECH AKD HER CHHX^REN. 

then held to wash away original sin, he virtually 
conceded that they had it, by agreeing with the coun- 
cil that the unbaptized could not be saved. He also 
abandoned his favorite theory of the third state, — 
that is, neither salvation nor perdition. 

Pressed to so great renunciations, we may well 
suppose that, if it had been a possible thing for him, 
in the face of the practice, traditions, and historical 
light of that age, to declare infant baptism to be a 
merel}^ human rite, and foisted into the Church, he 
would most certainly have done so. Such a thought 
seems to have been wholly foreign from the accused 
and accusers. This shows how deeply and thoroughly 
the ordinance was then imbedded in the history of 
the Church, only about three hundred years from the 
living teaching of the apostles themselves. That 
lapse of time would allow for the germinating and 
growth and adoption of a new doctrine, as it evi- 
dently had in their common belief in baptismal regen- 
eration. But a new article of faith is a quiet, unseen, 
mental growth, that may mature in a brief time ; 
while a rite, and specially a sacrament, like this one, 
is visible, public, — a thing for the congregation to 
see, and for the families to study and use in their 
most tender and interested relations. To dupe the 
whole Church, in that space of time, by the forgery, and 
leave no trace or clew to it, that a man like Pelagius 
could find, — scholarly, keen, and pushed vigor- 
ously to his defence as a heretic, — is a presumption 
that very few historical scholars would undertake to 
defend. 

More than this: the time between the council of 



THE PELAGIAN CONTROVERSY. 169 

Diospolis and the apostles must be divided, on the 
opposing theory of forgery and corruption, between 
two forgeries or corruptions. First, the rite of infant 
baptism must have been invented, popularized, and 
made authoritative ; and then it must have been per- 
verted, to carry the second forger}^ or corruption of 
baptismal regeneration as the antidote of original sin. 
And these two impositions must have come tandem, 
and not abreast, on the Church, and botli within those 
three centuries. It would have been a great deliver- 
ance for Pelagius if he could have shown any traces 
of the innovations as departures from the earlier usage. 
But he not only does not do this : he affirms his faith 
in the rite, as of divine authority, in a letter to Inno- 
cent, bishop of Rome. The letter is preserved only 
in the quotations of Augustine, who reports him as 
saying, — 

'' He was defamed by men who said he denied the 
sacrament of baptism to infants, and promised the 
kingdom of heaven to some without the redemption 
of Christ. . . . He never had heard even an impious 
heretic say what he was accused of saying concerning 
infants. . . . Who is so wicked as to keep infants 
from the kingdom of heaven, while he forbids their 
being baptized and regenerated in Christ? " ^ 

Coelestius makes a similar confession in his creed : 

8 " Se ab hominibus infamari quod neget parviilis baptism! sacra- 
mentnm, et absque redemption e Christi aliquibus coelorum regna 
promittat. . . . Nunquam se vel iiupium aliquem. hsereticiim audisse, 
qui hoc quod proposuit de parvulis, diceret. . . . Deinde quis tarn 
impius, qui parvulos exsortes regni coelorum esse velit, dudum eos 
baptizari et in Christo renasci vetatV" — Apud August., De Pecc. 
Orig., §§ 19, 20. 

15 



170 THE CHTJECH AND HEB CHILBEEIT. 

'' That infants ought to be baptized for the forgive- 
ness of sins, according to the rule of the universal 
Church and the teaching of the gospel, we con- 
fess." 9 

Julian, the other triumvir in this Pelagian defec- 
tion, is quite as positive as either of the others. '' So 
far from denying that it is useful to those of all ages, 
we pronounce an eternal anathema on all who say it 
is not necessary, even for infants." ^^ 

The action of three councils on the Pelagian heresy 
should be stated, because it expresses the opinion of 
large bodies of men, that represented a wide extent 
of country. 

In the j^ear of our Lord 416, a council of sixty- 
eight bishops was convened at Carthage ; and in giving 
an account of their doings, in a letter to Innocent, 
bishop of Rome, they say, '' Whoever denies that 
infants are delivered from perdition and obtain eter- 
nal salvation by the baptism of Christ, — let him be 
accursed." ^^ 

In the same year a council of sixty-one bishops 
convened at Milevis for the province of Numidia. In 
their letter to Innocent, they inform him of their de- 
liberations concerning those who held that " the sac- 
rament of Christian grace does not profit infants." In 
his reply Innocent, speaking of the notion of Pelagius, 

9 *' Qnanquam per baptismum Christi etiam parvulorum fieri re- 

deinptionem, libello suo Ccelestius in Cartliaginiensi ecclesia jam 
coufessus est." — August. Opera, Tom. x. 2336. Ed. Paris, 1838. 

^^ Apiid August. 

1"^ "Quicumqiie neget pamilos per baptismnm Christi a perditione 
liberari, et salutem percipere sempiternam, auatbema sit." — August. 
£pis. ad Innocentiurriy elxxv., alias xq. 



THE PELAGIAK CONTROVERSY. 171 

tliat infants may be saved without baptism, calls it 
perfatuum^ very absurd. ^^ 

Another and larger council was held at Carthage, 
A.D. 418, numbering two hundred and fourteen 
bishops. As declaring against one of the errors of 
Pelagius, they say, — 

" Infants, who have as yet not been able to com- 
mit any sins in their own persons, are truly baptized 
for the forgiveness of sins, that they may be cleansed 
by regeneration from that which they contracted by 
generation." ^^ 

The historical survey now made takes us back to- 
ward the apostles to A.D. 410, and covers the ground 
between A.D. 410 and A.D. 430. By a widely gath- 
ered and varied accumulation of testimony, the prac- 
tice of infant baptism at that time is made evident. 
Before leaving this section of our argument, certain 
things should be said relative to the evidence. 

From the days of the apostles no occasion had 
arisen to call out and put on record the facts concern- 
ing the acceptance and use of this ordinance, if in 
use, till the Pelagian controversy agitated the 
Church. But so soon as this arose, and gave occasion 
to bring up the practice of the Church, the testimony 
to a general use of this ordinance comes up from all 
parts of the Christian field, and in great abundance. 

12 " IHud vero quod eos vestra fraternitas asserit pr?edicare, par- 
viilos seternse vitae praeiDiis etiam sine baptismati.s gratia posse don- 
ari, perfatuTim est " — August., Epis. clxxxii. alias xciii. 

13 "Parvuli, qui nihil peccatorum in seipsis adhuc comniittere 
potnerunt, ideo in peccatorum remissionem veraciter baptizantur, 
ut in eis regeneratione mundetur quod generatione traxerant." — 
Concil. Carth.j An. 418, Can. Sec. 



172 THE CHUBCH AND HER CHILDBED. 

The entire Church is full of eyidence to the fact that 
infant baptism was universal usage, and unquestioned 
as to its apostolical origin. Southern Europe, North- 
ern Africa, Asia Minor, and the Holy Land had but 
one voice in the matter. If, then, the rite had been 
a human invention, and introduced into the Church 
after the da3's of tlie apostles, — three hundred years 
only, — it must have gone everywhere with the Church, 
and imposed on it in its most remote sections, and with 
a strangle thorouo^hness. 

It is to be noted, too, that the leaders in the Pela- 
gian heres)^ were deeply interested to show -that in- 
fant baptism was a human ordinance, foisted into the 
Church. No modern sectary can have so good reason 
for disproving its divine institution. For no argu- 
ment bore so heavily against them, as the proof of 
orioinal sin from the use of this rite in the Church to 
wash it away. They resorted to many and varied 
and even absurd reasons for its practice. Some said 
infants were not baptized for forgiveness. Others said 
the form of forgiveness was observed in the ritual, 
not that infants had sins, but that there might not be 
two forms of baptism. Some said tlie formula merely 
expressed forgiveness for any w^ho might have sins to 
be forgiven. Others still said that in baptism the 
sins of a pre-existing state were forgiven. 

In such extremities to account for this practice, 
w^hat a relief would it have been, if they could have 
pointed to any Church or sect, within three hundred 
j^ears, who had denied, disowned, and disregarded the 
institution I But, instead of discovering and using any 
such comfortable fact, Coelestus admits infant baptism 



THE PELAGIAN COXTKOVERSY. 178 

to be " the rule of the iiniversal Church ; " and Pela- 
gius says that '' he never had heard even any impious 
heretic or sectarj^ deny it." If it liad been of human 
orimn these two men were the scholars to discover it. 
For they were born and bred for public life ; and they 
spent many of their best years at Rome, the very ear 
of the Church universal, for both facts and rumors. 
They had both travelled extensively, and spent much 
time in Northern Africa, Egypt, Palestine, and South- 
ern Europe. Yet they never relieve themselves, in 
the most difl&cult part of their defence, by any inti- 
mation that the rite could prove nothing because it 
had no Scripture warrant, or was disregarded by some 
of the ancient churches. 

It must be noted, too, that this Pelagian question 
was discussed and disposed of by seven councils and 
synods before the death of its originator, namely : at 
Carthage, A.D. 412 ; at Jerusalem, A.D. 415 ; at 
Diospolis, A.D. 415 ; at Mileve and Carthage, A.D. 
416; at Carthage, A.D. 4 IT, and again A.D. 418.i^ 
Yet, in all the controversy attending these convoca- 
tions, in their sessions, and among the churches, no dis- 
covery is made in the tradition or usage of any church, 
that infant baptism was said by any one to be an innova- 

14 The acts of these councils, Carthage, A.D. 412 and 417, are ex- 
tant only so far as quoted by Augustine and others. The latter ap- 
pears to have acted on our subject only so far as to dissent from the 
opinion of Zozimus, the Konian bishop, that he had given in favor 
of Pelagius and Ccelestius. The former charged Coelestius with de- 
nying original sin ; and he defended himself by saying, that, what- 
ever he might think of the sins of infants, he believed in their bap- 
tism : Wall, 1 : 89. Seventeen other councils or synods took action on 
the Pelagian heresies, after the death, or rather disappearance from 
history, of Pelagius. The date of his death is unknown. 
15* 



174 THE CHUECH AND HER CHILDREN. 

tion, and so of useless reference. On the other hand, 
it is difficult to conceive how the ordinance, as a hu- 
man invention, could have taken a universal and un- 
questioned place in the Church within so short a time 
of the apostles, and no trace of its introduction, and 
no remonstrance against its use, and no Church disre- 
garding it, be left for the searching eye of those who 
were so deeply interested to find such a fact. 



CHAPTER XXII. 

AUGUSTINE ON INFANT BAPTISM. 

THE historical gleaning that we have made for our 
purpose out of the Pelagian controversy, covering 
a period of twenty years, gives a prominence, of neces- 
sity, to Augustine. He appears in this baptismal 
arena A.D. 412. But he was tlien in the fifty-eighth 
year of his age, and had been in the Church twenty- 
five years, and an ardent scholar forty years. Before 
he came to this controversy he had written and pub- 
lished extensively on Cliurch questions, and is, there- 
fore, a most important witness to be detained and 
still further examined in this case. But, while we 
hunt up more evidence in his earlier writings, we 
shall do well to regard what he says to Jerome in a 
letter written near the close of the Pelagian struggle. 
In his work on Free Will, written forty years be- 
fore, he has made brief allusion to infant baptism, so 
brief, and therefore inexplicit, that the Pelagians 
were able to turn it for their side. Of what he wrote, 
and its perversion, he thus speaks : — 

*' In that work I said some things concerning the 
baptism of infants, not largely, but as much as seemed 
needful for that book \_non sufficienter^ sed quantum 
illi operi satis videhatur~\ , that it helps those even 

175 



176 THE CHURCH AND HER CHH^DREN. 

who are not sensible of it, and are as yet without 
personal faith. I did not think it necessary then to 
speak of the condemnation of infants who die without 
it, because the controversy now pending was not 
then agitated " l_quia non quod nunc agitur agehatur^^ 

It is disputed questions and innovations that make 
their full record in the writings of the times, while 
conceded truths and common customs get but inci- 
dental and wayside allusions ; and therefore a lean, 
bald reference to a usage is conclusive that it has age 
and fixedness. 

Let us proceed to gather in, at this stage in our 
investigations backward, some allusions and declara- 
tions of Augustine concerning infant baptism, that he 
made in his writings during his twenty-five Christian 
j^ears preceding his disputes with Pelagius. 

The quotation we first introduce is from a letter to 
Jerome, in which the origin of the soul is in discus- 
sion. Augustine wavers between the two theories 
of propagation and of creation, and says, — 

" Before I can decide which theory must be taken, 
I deliberately say this : that the true one cannot be 
opposed to the most firm and well-grounded tenet by 
which the Church holds that the new-born children 
of human kind cannot be freed from condemnation 
except through the grace of the name of Christ, 
which he has commended in his sacraments."^ 



1 August., Epist. ad Hierony, clxvi. alias xxviii. 

2 Anteqiiani sciam quaenam earum pothis eligenda sit, hoc me 
non temere sentire protiteor, earn quae vera est non adversari robus- 
tissimse ac fundatissimse fidei, qua Cliristi ecclesia nee parvulos 
homines recentissime natos a damnatione credit, nisi per gratiam 
nominis Christi quam in suis sacramentis commendavit, posse libe- 
rari. — August., Epist. ^ clvi. alias xxviii. 



AUGUSTINE ON INFANT BAPTISM. 177 

Any one familiar with the synonyms and termin- 
ology of Augustine, when speaking of baptism, will 
not hesitate as to what he means by gratiam nominis 
Christ i. How very firmly established in the Church 
this ordinance was when he wrote this epistle, the 
two superlatives indicate, — robustissimce ac funda^ 
tissimce. 

Another passage in the same letter is equally ex- 
pressive : — 

'^ Whoever says that infants shall be made alive in 
Christ, that die without receiving this sacrament, 
both denies the apostolic doctrine and condemns the 
entire Church [totam condemnat ecclesiam]^ in which 
men hurry and run with their little ones to be bap- 
tized." ^ 

The next extract about to be made is more weighty 
for our purpose, because written several years ear- 
lier, and in confutation of schismatics who date from 
A.D. 312. 

The sect of the Donatists originated in a secession 
of seventy Numidian bishops or pastors from the 
African Church, on account of alleged irregularities 
and corruptions in it, and became so large as, at one 
time, to number more than four hundred pastors. 
They refused to fellowship the mother Church, 
and even denied the validity of its ordinations and 
sacraments, and re-baptized those who came from it 



3 Qiiisquis dixerit qnod in Christo YivificaT)i-mtur etiam parvuli 
qui sine sacranienti ejus participatione de vita exeunt, Lie profecto et 
contra apostolicam pr?edicationeni venit, et totam condemnat eccle- 
siam, ubi proptereacum baptizandis parvulis festinatur et curritur. 
— Ibidem, 



178 THE CHURCH AND HEK CHILDEEN. 

to them. In A.D. 400 Augustine wrote his De Bap- 
tismo Contra Donatistas, and in it argues the impiety 
of re-baptizing. He affirms that an impure and he- 
retical church administering, and a wicked man receiv- 
ing it, cannot make the ordinance invalid in that 
case. He proves this by citing the case of those bap- 
tized in youth, and who afterwards were led away 
by error or sinful feelings. They grew up into a 
better knowledge and moral state, but did not reject 
their baptism, as if made worthless by their unworthy 
condition when receiving it. He then appeals to 
the practice of the Church to sustain his position. 

" If an}^ one demands divine authority for this 
thing, we can very well show what the sacrament 
of baptism avails for infants from the circumcision 
that a former people received ; though what the whole 
Church practises, and was not instituted by councils, 
but was always held, may most justly be believed to 
be handed down by apostolic authority."'* 

Here is a schismatic Church, correct in faith, but 
defective in polity, of a hundred years' standing in 
its schism and irregularities ; and Augustine, in his 
argument to recover them, appeals to their practice 
of infant baptism. The appeal carries this usage 
back, as unquestioned, a century nearer to the apos- 
tles than the Pelagian controversy found it. But 
let it be noted that the point in the quotation and 

^ "Et si quisquam in hac re divinam auctoritatem quaerat (quan- 
qnam quod universa tenet ecclesia, nee conciliis institutum sed sem- 
per retentnm est, non nisi auctoritate apostolica traditum rectissime 
creditur) ; tamen veraciter conjicere i)ossumus quid valeat in parvu- 
lis "baptismi sacramentum ex circumcisione carnis quani prior popu- 
lus accepit." — Lib. iv. c. 24. 



AUGUSTINE ON INFANT BAPTISM. 179 

reference is not authority for the rite of baptism, but 
authority for its vahdity and perpetuity when once 
properly administered. The argument of Augustine 
is not for baptizing infants, but against re-baptizing 
any one, affirming that the church has never done it ; 
and in this affirmation he incidentally, and so the 
more powerfully for our argument, mentions infant 
baptism, as practised in that seceding church. 

Augustine seldom, if ever, argues for the apostolic 
authority of this sacrament for infants. He implies 
or affirms the fact, as not needing argument. So in 
his work on Genesis, one of his earliest writings, he 
says, — 

" The custom of the mother Church in baptizing 
infants must by no means be slighted or esteemed 
useless, or thought to be any thing else than an apos- 
tolic tradition." ^ 

No declaration of opinion could be clearer or 
stronger : yet this is not the language of ardent and 
sharp controversy, after he had been twenty years in 
the Pelagian conflict. It is the cool, scholarly decla- 
ration of his early Christian life, incidentally made, 
while inquiring which of the two theories of the 
origin of the soul is correct. In concluding his re- 
marks on that question, he says, that, let the soul 
of the infant originate as it may, the sanctifying 
waters of its baptism must not be omitted. 

The language is not stronger or more positive that 



5 "Consuetudo matris ecclesi^e in baptizandis parviilis neqna- 
qiiam spernanda est, neqne uUo modo siiperfliia deputanda, nee 
oinnino credenda nisi apostoLLca esse traditio." — De Genesi, Lib. 
X. c. 23. 



180 THE CHUKCH AND HEB. CHILDBED. 

he uses in a sermon preached and published against 
the Pelagians many years afterward, and in all the 
warmth of that heated controversy. Then he says 
of the ordinance of infant baptism and its power , — 

" This the Church has always had, always held : 
this it received from the creed of the fathers ; this it 
guards perseveringiy even to the end." ^ 

Here we take our leave of this eminent Church 
father, doubly grateful to him, first, that he has 
made the field of our inquiry so luminous with evi- 
dence from A.D. 430 to A.D. 412, in his debates with 
the Pelagians ; and secondly, that, in his efforts to 
reform the Donatists and others, he has set beacon 
lights along our path one hundred years farther back 
towards the apostles, to A.D. 312, when that schis- 
matic body took organization. 

6 "Hoc ecclesia semper habuit, semper tennit ; hoc a majornm 
fide percepit, hoc usque in finem perse veranter custodit." — Sennno 
X. De Verbis Apostoli. 



CHAPTER XXITI. 

INNOCENT AND CHRYSOSTOM. 

WE have been traversing the primitive forma- 
tions of polemic theology, yet only to obtain 
what has been incidentallj^ preserved in those old 
strata. Others explore those mountain ranges to 
quarry stone for the private theological houses and 
party breastworks of to-day. We only skirt the bold 
sides and quiet valleys, seeking the little fossil foot- 
prints of the children of Zion. So far our search has 
been abundantly repaid. The alluvium of time has 
carelessly covered, yet most faithfully preserved in 
their minutest delineations, the infantile impressions 
that we seek. So on cabinet slates of old red sand- 
stone you will see first the huge tracks of pre-Adamic 
monsters ; but among and between them, and half 
trampled out of sight, the delicate imprints of little 
birds and insects. Let us now proceed to remove 
other layers, and uncover deeper strata, to see what 
may be seen. 

Innocent, the first of that name in the episcopal 
chair at Rome, was elevated to that honor A.D. 402. 
He wrote several epistles in which infant baptism is 
mentioned. Decentius, a bishop, had written to 
Innocent, inquiring whether any one but a bishop 

16 181 



182 THE CHUBCH AND HEB CHILDREN. 

could bestow the chrism or anointing to a baptized 
infant. Innocent replies as follows : — 

'* Concerning^ the anointino- of the foreheads of 
infants, it surely cannot be done except by a bishop. 
. . . The presbyters, when they baptize in the 
presence or absence of the bishop, may properly 
anoint the baptized, if the chrism .has been prepared 
by the bishop ; but it is not proper for them to anoint 
the forehead with the same, which service belongs to 
the bishops alone." ^ 

Again, in a letter to a sj'nod at Toledo, on qualifi- 
cations for entering the ministry, he says, — 

" A certain law declares that particular ones only 
may be elected into the clerical order, — to wit, those 
who were baptized in infancy." ^ 

He here speaks of those little observances that 
pertain to an old custom, and that, by their very 
antiquity, have become rules and regulations. Form- 
alism in non-essentials is of slow growth, and the 
accretion of time ; and the small items mentioned in 
these two extracts are evidence that this rite had 
long been in use, and that law had sprung up out of 
mere habits in it. 

Chrysostom is not without testimony on this sub- 
ject. Though not a topic inviting his oratorical 



1 " De consifrnandis vero infantibns, manifestum est non ab altero 
quam episcopo fieri licere. . . . Presb^'teris sen extra episcopum, 
seu presente episcopo ciiiii baptizant, chrisinate baptizatos ungere 
licet, sed quod ab episcopo fuerit consecratuia; non tanien fontem 
ex eodeui oleo sigiiare, quod solis debetur ej)iscopis." — Ad DecentU, 
Can. 3. 

2 "Qui ab ineunte retate baptizati fuerint."— -4(?. Syn. Tolet, 
Can. 5. 



INNOCENT AND CHRYSOSTOM. 183 

powers, and one in which he was no way involved by 
controversy, it yet so lay at the very door of the 
Church, that it gained some wayside notices from 
him. 

He wrote a homily, Ad Baptizatos (To the Bap- 
tized), not now extant in Greek, but quoted by Julian 
and Augustine. One passage cited by Julian against 
Augustine to prove that Chrysostom rejected the 
doctrine of original sin, as commonly held then by 
the Church, is as follows : — 

" You see that baptism has many benefits, while 
some think this grace of heaven brings only forgive- 
ness of sins. I have stated ten benefits from it. We 
baptize infants for this reason, that, though not pol- 
luted by any sin, they may thus obtain sanctity, 
righteousness, adoption, the inheritance and fellow- 
ship of Christ." s 

On baptism, as compared with circumcision, we 
have his own words as follows : — 

" Our circumcision — I speak of that of baptism 
— has pleasure without suflPering and healing, is the 
minister of a thousand benefits, and fills us with the 
blessing of the Spirit. Nor has it any determinate 
time, as the other ; but one in immature age and in 



3 "Yides quot sunt 'baptisinatis largitates: et nonnuUi depiitant 
coelesteni gratiain in peccatoruni tantum remissione consistere; nos 
aiitem lionores computaviinus decern. Hac de causa etiarti infantes 
baptizamns, cum non sint coinquinati peccato, ut eis addatur sanc- 
titas, justitia, adoptio, ligereditas, fraternitas Christi, ut ejus membra 
sint." — August., contra Jul., Lib. i. 21. 



184 THE CHUECH AND HER CHILDREN, 

middle life and in old age may receive this circum- 
cision that is without hands." ^ 

The appHcation of this passage to infants turns 
somewhat on the meaning of aoapo), which, in the pre- 
ceding homily, Chrysostom uses in describing the in- 
fant when receiving circumcision. '' The new-born 
child, who cannot then understand what is being 
done," &c. to yuQ acoqov Ttatdiov, x.r.L 

In another place he bewails the carelessness of 
those who have received baptism, but make little or 
no spiritual use of it. 

"• The catechumens, so regarding it, pay no atten- 
tion to a godly life ; and those who have been 
enlightened [baptized], some of them being children 
when they received it, and some in sickness and long 
delaying, have no desire to live for God," &c.^ 

Chrysostom here laments over the same neglect 
that we see and lament, in those who were dedicated 
in their infancy to God, and yet take no spiritual and 
practical views of their relations to God and his 
Church, in consequence of that dedication. 

He had those in his Church who had not thrown 
off all the heathen superstitions of their unconverted 

^ 7^ ds 7][iET£pa TTEpLTO/iTj, 7) Tov (^aTTTlafiaTog, 7[£y(j, x^P^^ dv6dm>ov txci 
Tr]v larpEtav kol ^vplcov aya-iiCjv Tzpb^evog ylveraL rjiuv, not rrjg rot Tivev* 
fiarog ijiiaa £fimiT2,riGt ;^;dpi70f. Kal bvyl (hptofievov txst Katpdv Kad^anep 
eKEL, okTC e^EGTL Kal EV acjpu TpuKLa KOL EV i^Eari, Kol EV avTcb TG) yrjpa yEVO- 
/LLEV^v TLva TavTTjv di^aodaL rr/v dxEpoTTolrjrov iTEpEiTOfLT^v. — Ilom. xl., in 
Genesin. 

5 0/ [lEV ovv KarrjxoviiEVOL rovro OTrovdd^ovTEg ovds/itav Tzoiovvrat ETZLfii" 
TiEiav opT^oi) (3lov. 01 Se rjdrj (ptJTLa'&EVTEg^'^ ol (ikv etteI Tzaldsg ovteq tovto 
eXaiSov. K. T. A. — Horn, xxiii. , in Acta. Apost. 

1 ^cjTL^G) is a common synonym with the Greek Fathers for pan- 



INNOCENT AND CHEYSOSTOM. 185 

state. Some of these were accustomed to anoint the 
foreheads of their babes with a magical preparation, 
as a safeguard or charm against witches. He exhorts 
them against the pagan ceremony after this man- 
ner : — 

'' Defiling his child thus, does he not see that he 
makes it disgusting ? How can he bring it to the 
hands of the minister ? Tell me, how can you think 
it fitting for the seal to be placed on its forehead by 
the hand of the presbyter, when you have polluted 
it?"6 

No one will fail to perceive the reference here to 
the rite of infant consecration. No other early usage 
in the Church fills out the allusion. 

These extracts from Chrysostom, if left standing 
thus solitary, would not serve the ends of historic 
justice in this discussion. The patriarch of Con- 
stantinople, and his relations to the times, should be 
regarded. 

Chrysostom was born about A.D. 347, at Antioch ; 
ordained deacon A.D. 381, and presbyter A.D. 386, 
and Patriarch of Constantinople A.D. 387. Early 
devoting himself to Christ and the Church, he was a 
monk, an eremite, and an earnest, distinguished 
scholar ; and commenced authorship at the age of 
twenty-six, A. Do 373, dying at the age of sixty. 
Few names have been so eminent in the Eastern 
Church. His knowledge, as his influence, was very 

6 'O BopfSopu xpf'^'^ TTGJ^- ovx^ KOL pdeTiVKTov TTOid TO TTQcdlov; Ucjg yap 
dvTo TTpoaayec ral^ X^P^^ '^^^ lepecoc; ; 'Elne /jLOC, TrcJg a^log enl rov jietuttov 
GcppaytSa eTZLTe'drjvaL napa T7]g rov npeopvrepov x^^P^Q ev'&a tov (dop^opov 
enexpi'Gag.—Hom. xii., in 1 Epis. ad Corinthos. 
16* 



186 THE CHUBCH AND HER CHILDEEN. 

extensive ; and, as a legacy to the Christian Church, 
he left more than twelve hundred sermons, homilies, 
and exegetical discourses, and two hundred and fifty 
epistles, besides a miscellany of tracts. 

Such a man could not speak as he does of infant 
baptism, if it were a novelty, or had only a partial 
and equivocal place among the rites of the Church. 



CHAPTER XXIV. 

rOUE. COUNCILS, AND SIRICIUS. 

"YTTE pass now from one witness to many, from a 
V V man to a council. In those early and barbarous 
times, when Christianity was working its way into 
the kingdom of darkness by slow and perilous steps, 
Christian villages and families were subject to raids 
from the heathen, for pillage and capture and slaugh- 
ter. In these incursions it often happened, as on our 
Indian frontier, that children were carried off by the 
pagans, and in after years would be re-captured or 
ransomed. So it was in Northern Africa, in the times 
to which we have now come in our backward move- 
ment. 

Little ones so seized and carried off had been 
redeemed by the Mauritanian Christians. But, when 
brought back, they had so outgrown the memories 
of their childhood and of their early friends, as to 
be unable to tell whether they had been baptized or 
not. Then the question arose, whether they should 
be baptized at the hazard of a re-baptism, or not be 
baptized at the hazard of never being baptized. The 
case of such was submitted to the fifth Council of 
Carthage, A.D. 400 ; and they gave judgment as 
found in their Sixth Canon : — 

187 



188 THE CHUECH AKD HER CHnJ)REN. 

" As to those infants concerning whom no witnesses 
can be found who are able to testify beyond a doubt 
that they have been baptized, and who themselves 
cannot answer, on account of age, whether the sacra- 
ments have been administered to them, it is resolved 
that they may be baptized without any scruple, lest 
that scruple deprive them of the purification of the 
sacraments. For our Mauritanian brethren have come 
to us with this question," &c.^ 

It will be seen at a glance, that this rite must at 
that time have been owned and unquestioned in the 
African Church, or this double solicitude could not have 
been raised and brought to the deliberation and decision 
of a council ; for there was the fear that the persons 
might fail of baptism wholly by its being now with- 
held, and the fear of repetition if now administered, 
— of both which errors the Church then had a dread. 

The third council of Carthage, A.D. 397, was 
called to view this question of infant baptism from 
another standpoint ; but their testimony is to the 
same point for us, only the better for its variations. 
We have already spoken of the origin of the sect of 
the Donatists, and their notions. About the time of 
this council that party was breaking up, and showing 
a willingness to come back into the mother Church. 
It was therefore debated in this council, whether 
any returning from that schism should be admitted to 

1 Placuit (le mfantibus quoties non iuveniuntur certissinii testes 
qui eos baptizatos esse sine dubitatione testentur, neque ipsi sunt 
per setatem idonei de traditis sibi sacramentis respondere, absque 
ullo scrupulo eos esse baptizandos ; ne ista trepidatio eos f aciat sacra- 
mentor uui purgation e privari. Hinc enim legati Mauroruni fratrea 
nostri, «&c. — Labbei, Concil. Carthag. Quint 



FOUH COUNCILS, AND SIRICIUS. 189 

office in the Churcli. There was a division of the 
question for answer. It was agreed that those who 
went over to the Donatists, and were re-baptized by 
them, might return to the Catholic Church, but only 
to the rank of lajanen. As to those born among the 
Donatists, and baptized among them in infancy, the 
council agreed to ask advice of two bishops outside 
the region of the schism, and so more likely to be 
unbiased by local prejudices. They selected Sim- 
plicianus, Bishop of Milan, and Siricius, Bishop of 
Rome. The request for judgment is made in Canon 
48 of this council : — 

" As to the Donatists, it is resolved that we will 
consult our brother bishops Siricius and Simplicianus, 
concerning the infants only who were baptized among 
them, — whether that which they did without their 
own consent shall hinder them, as the error of their 
parents, from ministration in sacred things, when, with 
a proper feeling, they may be turned again to the 
Church of God." 2 

It would seem that these two referees judged that 
infants so baptized might be office-bearers afterward 
in the true Church. At least, a council at Carthage, 
four years afterward, affirmed this point without 
doubt or reference. This evidence is auxiliary to 
what we have before had, showing that this schismatic 
Church, originating A.D. 312, had infant baptism as 

2 De Donatistis, placiiit nt consulamus fratres et consacerdotes 
nostros, Siricium et Simpliciannm, de soils infantlbns qui baptizantur 
penes eosdeui, ne quod suo non fecerunt judiclo, cum ad eccleslam 
Del salubii proposito fuerint conversl, parentum lllos error Inipediat, 
ne provehantur sacrl altarls mlulstrl. — Labbei, Concil. Carihac/. 
Tert., Can. xlvili. 



190 THE CHURCH AKD HER CHILDREN. 

one of its rites. Had the mother Church or her way- 
ward African child originated this rite, or admitted 
it as a novelty during this period of separation, — 
almost a century, — there must have been some in- 
timations, affirmations, or denials about it, when, in 
those two councils, and in the reference of the ques- 
tion to two foreign bishops, they were agitating so 
delicate and important a point, and Avere making the 
holding of office in the Church to turn on it. It must 
be conceded, in view of these facts, that the rite of 
infant baptism was common in the Church as early at 
least as A.D. 312. 

The question raised and decided in the fifth coun- 
cil of Carthage, A.D. 400, was also discussed in the 
council of Hippo Regius, A.D. 393. This Numidian 
council is the one that established the canon of Scrip- 
ture in its full and final integrity. These bishops de- 
cided, that, where there was no certain proof that a 
person had been baptized in infancy, the rite might be 
administered. But their judgment and advice seem 
to have been somewhat neglected ; for, in a synodical 
letter of A.D. 397, it is implied that a complaint for 
neglect had come before them ; and thej^ enjoin action 
in this breviat : " Concerning those who have no 
sure evidence that they have been baptized, let them 
be baptized." 2 

Let us now continue our approach nine years 
nearer to the times of the apostles, and take the testi- 
mony from Siricius at the time of his induction as 



3 De his qui nuUo testimonio se baptizatos novenint ut "baptizen- 
tur. — Centurice Magdeburg. Cent. iv. c. 9. 



FOUR COUNCILS, AND SIRICIUS. 191 

Bishop of Rome, A.D. 384. When he entered this 
office he found there an unanswered letter from 
Himerius, bishop of Aragon. In this letter he is 
informed that in Spain they had been accustomed to 
baptize on almost any occasion of a general religious 
gathering. To this Siricius objects, in his reply, 
with a decided dissatisfaction, and says that Pente- 
cost and Easter are the only proper occasions for 
baptism, with specified exceptions, as thus : — 

" As to infants, who, from their age, are not yet 
able to speak [make confessions and renunciations], 
and others who from any necessity may be in imme- 
diate need of the sacred water of baptism, he would 
hasten to their relief, lest it turn to our ruin if the 
saving water be denied to them needing, and any one 
of them should die losing the kingdom and life. If 
one is in danger from shipwreck, or the attack of an 
enemy, or siege, or if any dangerous sickness come 
on one and he desire this aid of our faith, let him 
have the gifts of regeneration in the very moment 
when he asks for them." ^ 

Siricius furnishes us with another item of weight in 
the same letter, where he is upbraiding the Spanish 
bishops for inducting into the ministry those who had 
been but recently converted to Christianity. 

'' He who dedicates himself to the services of the 
Church should have been baptized in his infancy, be- 

4 Ita infantibns qui necdum loqiii potiierint per jetatem, Tel his 
qnibus in qualibet necessitate opus fuerit sacra iinda baptismatis, 
omnivolnmns celeritate succnrri, ne ad nostrarum perniciem tendat 
aniniarnm, si negate desiderantibus fonte salntari, exiens nnnsqnis- 
que de seculo et regnum perdat et vitam. — Sirici . Episcop. Decrei, 
Epist. Prima, c. 2. 



192 THE CHURCH AND HER CHILDREN. 

fore the years of youth, and been accustomed to the 
duties of the readers." ^ 

In these several passages just now cited, in which 
either councils or individuals make reference to this 
ordinance, many minor points and side issues are 
brought out. The questions are raised : Who may ap- 
ply the chrism that accompanies baptism ; what graces 
are conferred by it : whether its administration is 
confined to anj' particular time ; neglect of its obli- 
gations is rebuked, and heathen defilement of the 
babe's forehead before baptism ; whether those may 
receive the ordinance who are uncertain as to a prior 
baptism ; whether valid, if administered by here- 
tics and schismatics ; whether those so baptized may 
enter the ministry ; whether the time of administra- 
tion may be hastened in case of mortal peril ; and 
whether one may enter on the sacred offices of the 
Church who was not baptized in infancy. 

These questions were discussed and answered, in 
places wide asunder, as in Spain, Italy, Africa, and 
Asia Minor. It is difficult to conceive of such a gen- 
eral and varied discussion of the same thing, unless 
the rite were at the same time general in the Church. 
It could not have been isolated and rare cases, that led 
to this wide expression of views, as if it were then 
beginning stealthily to intrude itself among the ap- 
pointments of God for his house. It was an ordi- 
nance not only at home in some regions and Churches, 
but it was at home everywhere in the Church. And 

5 Quicumque igitiir se ecclesi.ne vovet obseqiiiis, a sua infantia ante 
pubertatis annos baptizari, et lectorum debet niiiiisterio sociari. 
— Fjidernj c. 9. 



FOUR COUNCILS, AND smicius. 193 

it had evidently been so, for so long a time, that 
neither the memory of man, nor the record of coun- 
cil, nor the writings extant of any author, run back to 
the contrary. It is also difficult to conceive of such 
a discussion over issues trivially related to the main 
point and rite itself, within three hundred years of the 
apostles, and no intimation be made by any one of 
the variously related and often excited parties, that it 
was a human ordinance, of which the apostles had no 
knowledge, and that therefore it was a non-essential 
to Church order. In the conflicts of opinion concern- 
ing doctrines and rights and duties related to this or- 
dinance, and in the necessary study for the authority 
of precedents, stimulated often by intense partisan 
feelings, how is it possible, if the rite were not apos- 
tolic, that its invention, and intrusion into the Church 
should not be discovered and declared ? 

While no one before the times of Pelagius was as 
much interested as he to deny or disprove the apos- 
tolic origin of the sacrament, many were so deeply 
involved in issues related to it, that they could have 
eased off the force of many an argument, and hushed 
the scruples of conscience many times, if they could 
only have known and felt and said that Infant Bap- 
tism came into the Church after the apostles had left 
the world. But, so far as our survey has extended, 
history gave them no warrant for such an assumption : 
no one made it. 

17 



CHAPTER XXV. 

AMBEOSE OF ^VIILAN, BASIL, GREGORY NAZIANZEN, 

AND OPTATUS. 

IN continuing our inquiries on the practice of In- 
fant Baptism in the times immediately following 
the age of the apostles, we come next to Ambrose of 
Milan. This step carries us ten years nearer to the 
apostles, as Siricius, our last authority, was made 
"bishop A.D. 384, and Ambrose A.D. 374. He Avas 
an evangelical, devout, energetic, and scholarly man in 
the Church. Though in the Latin branch of it, he 
read the Greek fathers, mingled freely in the contro- 
versies of the times, and wrote extensively, twenty 
volumes at least, besides ninety tractates, or letters so 
called. As our topic was not then in dispute, we 
find in the writings of this father only wayside allu- 
sions to it, whose power, of course, is inversely as 
their direct and polemic character. 

In his commentary on St. Luke, he traces a re- 
semblance between John tlie Baptist and Elias, while 
remarking on the words, '' He shall go before him in 
the spirit and power of Elias." In tracing the par- 
allelism he says, that they were both in the desert ; 
both fed on coarse food, — one locusts, and the other 
what the ravens furnished ; both rebuked kings,— the 

194 



AMBROSE OF MILAK. 195 

one Ahab, and the other Herod ; and after other points 
in the comparision, he says, '' The one turned back 
Jordan, the other turned men to the waters of sal- 
vation.*" ^ 

He then continues his remarks on the miracle of 
Elias in dividing Jordan after this manner : '' Per- 
haps this may appear to be fulfilled in our day and in 
that of the apostles. For that flowing of the waters 
back to the source of the river, in the division of it by 
Elias (as the Scripture says, Jordan was turned back), 
signified the sacrament of the waters of salvation, 
about to be instituted, by which little children, who 
are baptized, are reformed from their corruption back 
to the primitive condition of their nature."^ 

The reference of the bishop to the washing away 
of original sin in baptism is nothing to our purpose. 
The use of the ordinance is our point of inquiry. 
Of the abuse of it we have sufficiently spoken for a 
treatise of this kind while we were sifting the Pela- 
gian controversy. Later Church historians will not 
probably find all the errors and excesses of " the 
fathers " confined to the first three or four Christian 
centuries. 

In speaking of Abraham, in his work on the patriarch, 
as enjoined to circumcise infants, he says that the law 
very reasonably imposed the rite on every male infant, 

1 Ille Jordanem divisit, hie ad lavacrum salutare convertit 

2 "Sed fortasse hoc supra nos et supra apostolos videatur exple- 
tum. Nam ille sub Elia diAdso aiune tiuvialiuin recursus undaruni 
in origiuem fluniiiiis (sicut (licit Scriptura, Jordanes conversus est 
retrorsuni) wsif^p-iilicat salutaris lavacri futura mysteria, per qnre in 
l^riniordia naturae sure qui baptizati fuerint parvuli a nialitia refor- 
mantur." — Comment in St. Lucce, c. 1. 



196 THE CHURCH AND HER CHH^DREK. 

even those of the bond-servant, that the remedy might 
be as extensive as the disease, and come on the child 
as early as his danger. He includes the proselyte by 
saying, that every race as well as*age is exposed, and 
by the law was required and expected to be protected. 
Showing a spiritual meaning over circumcision and 
baptism, he says the import of the rite is plain. 
Those born in the house are Jews ; and the purchased 
are Gentile believers ; and both must be circumcised 
from sin, if they would be salved. '' Both the home 
born and the foreign, the clean and the unclean, must 
be circumcised by the forgiveness of sins, so as to sin 
no more ; since no one enters the kingdom of heaven 
except by the sacrament of baptism." ..." For ex- 
cept one be born again, of water and the Holy Spirit, 
he cannot enter into the kingdom of God," quoting 
the words of Christ. Then he continues, " He ex- 
cepts no one, not an infant, not one prevented by any 
necessity." ^ 

These two citations from a witness, born A.D. 
833, and dying A.D. 397, are as good proof of the 
practice of this rite commonly in that period, as 
though he had devoted whole chapters and tractates 
to it. The bishop of Milan evidently had other 
work than writing largely on an ordinance generally 
received and practised, as from the apostles. 

3 "Ergo et JucLtbus et Grrecus, et quicnmqne crecliderit, debet 
scire se circunicidere a peccatis, nt possit salviis fieri. Et doniesti- 
cus, et alienigena, et Justus, et peccator circunicidatur remissione 
peccatorum, ut i:)eccatuni non operetur ami:)lius ; quia nemo adsceiidit 
in regnuiii cjelorum, nisi i^er sacranientuni baptismatis. . . . Kisi 
enini quis renatus fuerit ex aqua et Spiritu Sancto non potest in- 
troire in regnum Dei. Utique nullum excipit, non infantem, non 
aliqua pneventuni necessitate." — AMBKOsn de Abraham, Lib. ii. 
c. 11. 



AMBEOSE OF MILAK. 197 

The careful reader will here note one of those 
sjmonyms for baptism, of which the early Christian 
writers made so free a use, and of which we shall 
lind a great variety as we proceed. ''Circumcised 
by the forgiveness of sins, since no one enters the 
kingdom of lieaven except by the sacrament of bap- 
tism." Here, evidently, Ambrose uses " the forgive- 
ness of sins," and '' the sacrament of baptism," as 
meaning one and the same thing. So in the quota- 
tion above made from his Commentary on St. Luke, 
he calls baptism " the sacrament of the waters of 
salvation." Augustine expresses baptism by " the 
grace of the name of Christ." * Chrysostom calls it 
'' circumcision ; " '' our circumcision, — I speak of that 
of baptism ; " ^ and " enlightening " ^ and " the 
seal." -^ Siricius calls it " the saving water." ^ 

As we proceed, the reader will find the following 
words and phrases as common synonyms for baptism : 
'' The circumcision of Christ," " washing of regen- 
eration," " sanctification," '' consecration," " regener- 
ation," "- the laver of regeneration," '' the laver of 
salvation," ''the enlightening," "born of water," 
" spiritual circumcision," " sacrament of eternal sal- 
votion," " renewal," &c. 

In the citation of any passages where these terms 
occur, the text itself, or the context, will readily 
show that nothing else than baptism can be meant. 
Those early writers thus used varied expressions for 
the one act of baptism, as we use the words christen, 
consecrate, and dedicate, for baptize. 



4 p. 176. 5 p. 183. 6 p. 184. T p. 185, 8 p. 191. 
17* 



198 THE CHTJECH AND HEE CHILDEEX. 

Basil, a father eminent in the Greek Church, was 
bom about A.D. 329. He pursued his studies at 
Constantinople, Antioch, and Athens. At first a 
hermit, he became successively a deacon, a presbyter, 
an assistant bishop, and then sole bishop of Neo- 
Csesarea. He was an able theologian, and an efficient 
manager in ecclesiastical affairs. He is introduced 
here among the ancient witnesses for infant baptism, 
not because he has written abuVidantly or with pecu- 
liar directness on the subject, though his testimony 
has weight, but because some things said by him have 
been made to bear ao^ainst this ordinance as existing^ 
in his day. 

In one of his sermons, delivered on a fast day, ob- 
served on account of a great drought and famine, he 
rebukes the church-members for absenting them- 
selves. 

" The grown men," he says, " generally follow their 
business. A very few come to join in the worship ; 
and those, indolent, sleepy, and gazing about." ''And 
these little boys, laying their books by at school and 
joining with us in the responses, do it as a relaxation 
and play," &c.^ 

It is quite evident that these children were bap- 
tized, because in the ancient church service onl)' the 
baptized could remain through the prayers that called 
for responses. A few woi-ds will make this plain. 
In the church services of that day, the sermon came 
before the prayers ; and to hear it any and all classes 

9 0/ 6e TTaldeg ol cfiLKporaroL bvroc, ol rag de?i,TOvg ev rolg di^aGKaTdoLg 
aTTO&e/jLevoL kol cvfiiBouvreg Vfilv, ug dvectv fia/i?j)v Kal repiptv to TTpdyfia 
fiETepxovTaL, K.T.A. — Di'ought and Famine: a Fast Daij-Sermon. 



BASIL* 199 

could be present, — heathen, Jews, catechumens, or 
candidates for membership. After the sermon fol- 
lowed the prayers ; and these were of two kinds. 
First, prayer for the catechumens, repeated by the dea- 
con. At each petition in this prayer, the congrega- 
tion responded, " Lord have mercy on them." As 
all Jews and unbelievers and unbaptized ones, ex- 
cept the catechumens, were requested to leave the 
church before this prater was offered ; so, after it was 
offered, the catechumens themselves were requested 
to leave. Then the second kind of prayers followed, 
the baptized alone being left ; and through these 
varied prayers, responses were made by the whole 
congregation remaining.^^ 

Wlien, therefore, Basil speaks of little children 
uniting in the responses, he virtually says they were 
baptized ; since none but the baptized could be pres- 
ent during that part of the service. 

One other item should be taken from Basil, as 
mentioned by Theodoret and other historians of that 
time. The only child of Valens, the emperor, being 
dangerously ill, Basil was called to the palace. After 
looking on the dying little one, he assured the father 
that the child would be restored if baptized. The 
child was baptized, but died. A query has been 
raised whether the child was not old enough to be 
baptized on his own account. But Theodoret calls 
the child Ttcadlov^ the word used by St. Mark, when he 
says, '' They brought young children " to Jesus, and 
so small that '' he took them up in his arms ; " and 

i<^ Bixgham's Antiq. Cliris Ch. book i. cliap. 3 ; book xiv. cliap, 5 



200 THE CHURCH AND HER CHILDREN. 

bj St. Matthew, when he says, " They found the 
young child," " wrapped in swaddling clothes." 
Little doubt should be allowed that this was a case 
of infant baptism. 

In one of his sermons Basil urges baptism on some 
of his hearers, who had evidently been brought up 
in Christian families, and therefore must have failed 
of infant consecration. From this some insist that 
the rite could not then have been in use. As well 
argue that it is not in use now, because some are 
urged to regard it. No doubt Christian parents 
neglected some of their duties then as well as in our 
times. Moreover, it is no improbable thing that 
some of these hearers, now chided for neglecting 
baptism, were too old for infant consecration when 
their parents were converted to Christianity, and, 
since their own conversion, had been very tardy in 
making a profession of love to Christ. 

Gregory Nazianzen is an important link in our 
chain of evidence. Born A.D. 325, devoted to the 
Lord by his mother, Nonna, as early as Samuel, and 
his father, the bishop of Nazianzen for forty-five 
years, a student in the two Csesareas of Cappadocia 
and Palestine, as also in Alexandria and Athens, his 
opportunities were good for knowing early the doc- 
trines and customs of the Church.- He was ordained 
a presbyter A.D. 361 ; afterward assistant bishop of 
his aged father ; in A.D. 379 he was pressed into 
taking the chair of patriarch at Constantinople, but 
soon withdrew into a more congenial and quiet life, 
and died A.D. 390. He was one of the first of 
orators in the Greek Church ; from his doctrinal 



GEEGORY NAZIANZEN. 201 

studies and labors he gained the title of The Theolo- 
gian ; and as a polemic, a writer, and a man of a 
practical religious spirit and activity, he led the men 
of his era in shaping the course of events for the 
Church. 

Among the extant works of Gregory is a sermon 
on Baptism, that settles, beyond any question, the 
practice of the rite on infants in his times. It may 
be well to preface the quotations that are about to 
be made from this writer with the remark, that he 
calls baptism by various terms, as, "- the anointing," 
"the washing," ''the gift," ''the laver of regenera- 
tion," "the seal," "the divine formation," "the 
grace," " our improved formation," " the dedication," 
" the sanctification," " the enlightening." 

Neander says that some of these synomyms came 
into use because the teachers of those days con- 
founded regeneration with baptism, and connected 
the gifts and graces of the Holy Spirit with the per- 
formance of this external act. Indeed, the fathers 
then commonly gave the name of regeneration to bap- 
tism alone. So in the opening of this sermon, Greg- 
ory says that baptism brings one into a new life, 
and that the baptized should guard most sacredly 
against sins afterwards, "because there is no 
second regeneration." ^^ In another part of the 
same, he meets the frivolous excuses of many for 
delaying baptism, on the ground that sins com- 
mitted afterwards could not be easily cleansed away. 
He warns them of the craft of the great adversary, 

11 'Ov/c 'ovarjQ devrepag ava-yevv/jaciog. 



202 THE CHURCH ANT> HER CHH^DREN. 

who, if he cannot make them despise baptism, will 
make them so to prize it, and be over-cautious in 
its use, as to lose it altogether. Then he says that 
every age needs it, — youth and gray hairs and infants. 
" Have you an infant ? Let not evil take advantage 
of the age : let it be sanctified from infancy ; let it be 
consecrated by the Spirit from birth. You, as a 
faint-hearted and unbelieving mother, are afraid to 
bestow the seal on account of its weakness. But 
Hannah, even before Samuel was born, promised him 
to God ; and, as soon as born, consecrated him, and 
clothed him in a holy garment, not fearing human 
weakness, but trusting in God." ^ 

It is rare that we find an enforcement of the duty 
of infant baptism in any modern writer more plain 
and pointed than this. It is a clear, direct, earnest 
inculcation of the duty, through the appointed 
manner of God, to dedicate the child to the Most 
High. No one can misapprehend the allusion that 
he makes soon after. When he has reminded the 
mother of the use of amulets and charms, so common 
in that day for protection, he says, '' Give to it the 
Trinity, that great and noble guard." ^^ 

Let the name of the Triune God, to whom he is 
consecrated, be called on him in the formula of 



bvvxi^v Kad-iep(i)y^yT(o tu UvEvuaTi. 2i) SeSocKag rr/v ocppaylda 6iu to 
(pVGECjg ud^Fvec, djg fitKpoxbvxog rj firjTzrjp okiybTTiOToq. 

*OvK ""Avva 6e koL ttoIv i] yvv7jT^r/vat rbv I,a/LLOv^?i nvdvasax^TO tg) Qeu 
Kol yevvrj^evTa iepbv ev^vg tzolf.I, kol ttj cepaTiKy aroXy avvnvE'&e^ev, 6v to 
uv{fpC)Tnvov (f>oi37]d€L(ja, tgj de QeCj TTKjrevaaaa. — Greg. Naz. Or. xl. 

13 Aog avTL) ttjv Tptada, to fXEya Koi KoTibv (pv7\,aKT7]piov. 



GREGORY NAZIANZEN. 203 

baptism. This will prove the best amulet and 
charm against evil. 

We pass to another important quotation. After 
urging this ordinance on those who understand its 
import, he supposes an objection, worded thus : — 

'*• But what say you of infants, not yet old enough, 
to realize the loss or the grace ? Shall we baptize 
them ? Most certainly, if any danger impend. 
Better to be consecrated without sense of it, than to 
die unsealed and unadmitted. And a reason to us 
for this is circumcision on the eighth day, — a certain 
typical seal, and applied to those not taking the 
sense of it, as also the anointing of the doorways, 
saving the first born by senseless things." Having 
given his opinion that some may be kept back to 
the third year, when they will be able to utter the 
baptismal responses, he continues : — 

" But it is b)^ all means fitting that they should be 
made safe by the laver, on account of the sudden 
attacks of danger and powerful assaults coming on 
us."i^ 

This passage from Gregory's sermon is declarative 
of both a fact and a tendency in his times. The 
fact is the practice of this ordinance in his day. Or 
to state the same in the language of Neander, 
" Infant baptism was now generally recognized as an 
apostolical institution," and " acknowledged to be 
necessary." 

The tendency was to neglect it, and because of, 

14 T€TECxi'(^^(^i' ^£ T(j Xovrpu navTi TioyCj XvaL(JTE?ieGT£pov 6ta rue k^al^vqg 
GV/LtmiTTOVGag ijiuv TcpoGjSoTi.ag r€)v kcvSvvuv, koI poij&dag caxvpoTspag. — 
Or. xl. 



204 THE CHURCH AND HEE, CHH^DKEK. 

false views of the design and powers of baptism. 
Neander, while treating of its neglect by adult 
converts, thus states those false views, and the con- 
sequent delay of the rite : — 

'' They were disposed to enter into a sort of com- 
pact, or bargain, with God and Christ, to be permit- 
ted to enjoy as long as possible their sinful pleas- 
ures, and yet in the end, by the ordinance of 
baptism, which like a charm was to wipe away their 
sins, to be purified from all their stains, and attain to 
blessedness in a moment. Hence many put off bap- 
tism until they were reminded by mortal sickness, 
or some other sudden danger, of approaching death. 
Hence it was, that in times of public calamity, in 
earthquakes, in the dangers of war, multitudes 
hurried to baptism, and the number of the existing 
clergy scarcely sufficed for the wants of all." "- The 
cause of delaying baptism, with numbers, was their 
want of any true interest in religion, their being 
bred and living along in a medley of Pagan and 
Christian superstitions ; nor can it be denied, that 
the neglect of infant baptism contributed to prolong 
this sad state of things." '' Many pious but mistak- 
en parents dreaded intrusting the baptismal grace to 
the weak, unstable age of their children ; which 
grace, once lost by sin, could never be regained. 
They wished rather to reserve it against the more 
decided and mature age of manhood, as a refuge from 
the temptation and storms of an uncertain life."^^ 

And Neander, in supporting these statements, 

15 Cliurcli History, ii. 319 et seq. 



GREGOliY KAZIANZEN. 205 

quotes this same sermon of Gregory from which the 
above extracts are taken. 

Now, it is plain why Gregory gives the suggestion 
that infants, in certain cases, be kept back to the 
third year, while he urges that they immediately 
" should be made safe by the laver," in any case of 
imminent death. The apostolical and traditional 
theory of the Church moved him to preach and urge 
the early application of this seal ; but public opinion, 
vitiated by a false view of the ordinance, was setting 
the other way, and reserving the rite, as having a 
cleansing power, to be applied, if they could so time 
it, in the last hours of life. Gregory attempted to 
compromise somewhat the true views in a medium 
time, and suggested the third year. 

This little summary of the history of those two 
conflicting theories and wishes shows us how deeply 
imbedded in the foundations of the Church this 
ordinance for infants was at that very early day. 

We have here, too, another of those historical 
crises and partisan exigencies, growing out of or 
centering in this rite, where one party must have 
been strongly tempted and pressed to deny its apos- 
tolical authority. If it had power to wash the soul 
clean for -heaven, and if there was ''no second 
regeneration" by the laver, and if sins committed 
after baptism were exceedingly difficult and almost 
impossible of removal, there was strong reason why 
not only infant baptism should be discarded, but 
adult baptism be deferred to the last moments of 
life. It was almost a question of salvation, under 
the theories of that day, to set infant baptism aside. 

18 



206 THE CHUECH AND HEE CHILDEEN. 

Yet under all this partisan pressure, and amid all 
these tender spiritual anxieties of parents for the 
salvation of their children, no doubt is raised on the 
apostolical origin of the rite. They made no opposi- 
tion to it, or urged delay of it, on the ground that it 
is a human invention and innovation in the Church, 
and may be ruled out by human authority. 

In the writings of Optatus, Bishop of Mileve, we 
find a single passage only on our topic. Optatus 
was in ofiBce here about A.D. 368. He could not, 
of course, avoid controversy with the Donatists, and 
so wrote several books on that schism. In the dis- 
pute whether baptism is valid when administered 
hj an heretical or unworthy officer, he compares the 
putting on of Christ to the putting on of a garment, 
and then says, — 

" But lest any one should say that the Son of God 
is irreverently called by me a garment, let him read 
the apostle saying, ' As many of you as have been 
baptized into Christ, have put on Christ.' O gar- 
ment always the same and jet so variable, that 
clothes properly all ages and forms I It does not 
hang loosely about infants, nor is it too small for 
men, nor needs it any change for women." ^^ 

The passage does not need an explanation. No com- 
ment can make it plainer. He is speaking of bap- 
tism, and declares its fitness and adaptation to any 

16 "Seel lie quis dicat, temere a me Filiuin Dei vestem esse 
(iictiiru, legat apostolum dicentem: Quotqot in nomine Cliristi 
baptizati estis, Christum induistis. O tunica semper una, et innu- 
merabilis, qu?e decenter vestiat et omnes setates et formas! Nee in 
infantibus rugatur, nee in juvenibus tenditur, nee in foeininis 
mutatur." — Lib. Quinto de Schis. Donatls. 



OPTATUS. 207 

age and either sex. Among the classes of persons 
to whom it is adapted he mentions infants. Why 
applicable and fitted to them, except as they were 
fit subjects for it ? If infants were not then usually 
receiving it in the ministrations of the Church, the 
references to them had no pertinence, and the state- 
ment conveys a wrong impression. 



CHAPTER XXVI. 

a:n" objectiox consideeed. 

IN this connection it will be well to notice the 
assertion of some, that many of the early Church 
fathers were not baptized in their infancy, and 
therefore the rite could not have been regarded as 
of divine authorit3^ They give as instances these 
four in the Greek Church : Basil, Gregory Xazian- 
zen, Nectarius, and Chrysostom ; and in the Latin 
Church, Ambrose, Jerome, and Augustine. If these 
men were not baptized in infancy, it may have been 
owing to the fact that when they were infants their 
fathers were pagans, which we must inquire into ; or 
it may have resulted from the tendency, that we 
have been considering, to defer the rite as long as 
could be safely done, and yet receive it before death. 
Moreover, it is to be considered that parents then, as 
now, might neglect a rite held by universal theory 
and in the general practice of the Church, and the in- 
fants neglected become eminent men afterward. 
Marked failures prove only and at best but a general 
observance. But let us inquire into the alleged 
facts. 

The time of the baptism of Basil is nowhere men- 
tioned, and so may have been in infancy ; and some 

208 



AN OBJECTION CONSIDEEED. 209 

expressions of rhetorical fulness in Gregory's funeral 
ora,tion on him take the meaning of infant baptism 
better than any other. For illustration, Gregory 
speaks of the reconstruction of his formation in the 
beginning of his life, and of his being consecrated 
from the womb and in infancy.^ 

It seems the more probable that Gregory here re- 
fers to his baptism ; as he, in mentioning leading 
events in the life of Basil from his birth onward, 
makes there alhisions to him in a time when his bap- 
tism would properly take place, and omits any allu- 
sion to it as taking place at any other time. 

When much opposition, and for various reasons, 
was made against the continuance of Gregory Nazi- 
anzen in the patriarchate of Constantinople, he 
retired, and with a remark that would give great 
prosperity to the Church of God, if the spirit of it 
could become general : '' If I am the cause of these 
unfortunate troubles, let me hasten away ; but let 
the Church of Christ have peace." Thej^ appointed, 
as his successor, Nectarius, an unbaptized layman, of 
senatorial rank, no scholar, and less a divine, but of 
fine appearance and cultured manners. So they 
spoiled a good alderman and made a poor bishop, 
not an uncommon result when a factious church turns 
off an able and useful pastor. 

As this Nectarius had not been baptized when 
elected, the opponents of infant baptism argue from 
the fact for their views. They disregard the Chris- 
tian condition of things then existing, that very 



1 'Ek Bp€(j)ovg Ka'&Lepo)(j£vog airb y,r]Tpag, 

18* 



210 THE CHURCH AND HER CHILDREN. 

many, if not half, the nominal Christians of the day 
were converted after their childhood, and, when con- 
verted, felt the force of the prevalent notion, that 
baptism had best be deferred till the approach of 
death. They overlook the fact, too, that nothing is 
known of the parents of Nectarius. They are as 
obscure in history as the parents of Cain's wife. If 
heathen, that is the best of reasons why their son 
failed of this ordinance. The argument that our 
opponents make here is an argument from the un- 
known, and also, as in the case of Basil, against the 
probable. 

Chrysostom also is claimed for the same end. He 
intimates that his father died when he himself was 
very young, and neither the son nor any one implies 
that the father was a Christian. At the age of 
eighteen he was studying under the heathen teacher 
Libanius, whom Gibbon calls "the last glory of ex- 
piring paganism." Then, after being a pupil of 
Meletius, the bishop of Antioch, for a season, he was 
baptized by him when about twenty-one. Two 
historians, bishops of Alexandria, say that his mother, 
Anthusa, was baptized afterward. When he was 
transferred from the heathen to the Christian school, 
Libanius, according to Sozomen, said that the Chris- 
tians stole him away. [^Eauhjaav,'] This would imply 
that he was a pagan pupil, as following his father, 
and became a Christian convert. Neander and Mos- 
heim imply that his mother was a Christian from his 
infancy ; but evidently his father was not, and so he 
failed of infant baptism, as the will of the father 
would prevail in such a case, and in those times. 



AX OBJECTION CONSIDERED. 211 

The varied and earnest manner in which Chrysos- 
tom urged the duty and privileges and uses of infant 
baptism, as we have seen, shows that he would be 
very unwilling that his unfortunate loss of it should 
be turned against the ordinance, or ba forced into an 
evidence that it was not common in the days of his 
infancy. 

Gregory Nazianzen was not baptized in infancy, 
yet he had Christian parents. Two difficulties, how- 
ever, lie in the way of the use of this great man's 
name against the ordinance in question. The funeral 
oration of Gregory on his father ^ makes it evident 
that his father was not a Christian till some time after 
his marriage. How soon after the marriage Gregory 
was born is unknown with an exactness sufficient for 
an argument in this case. Mosheim says that Greg- 
ory was born about A.D. 325 ; Gaericke says about 
330. After some intricate study to fix the time more 
definitely, one is quite inclined to sympathize witli 
Dr. Wall, who, having gone through a similar labor, 
says that he is " quite out of the humor of entering 
on a new search after anybody's age." If born be- 
fore his father's conversion, his lack of baptism in 
infancy makes nothing against the Christian usage 
of the day. The argument of our opponents, there- 
fore, gains in this case only the advantage of an 
uncertainty, and an interrogation point. 

Moreover, the father of Gregory was a Hypsista- 
rian, a worshipper of the Highest [yipiarog'], a sect who 
recognized one absolute essence, having with this tenet 

2 Orat. xix. 



212 THE CHURCH AXD HER CHH^DEEN. 

a mixture of Jewish and pagan notions. Neander 
informs us that his wife, " the pious Xonna, by her 
prayers, and the silent influence of the reUgion which 
shone through her hfe, gradually won over to the 
gospel her husband, who had belonged to an unchris- 
tian sect.^ This Avinning of the father of Gregory 
" gradually " doubles the doubt whether his son was 
not born while the father was 5'et an unchristian 
man, and so, as a matter of course, lost infant bap- 
tism. 

Augustine was baptized in his thirty-third year, as 
he himself states in his Confessions. Some have cast 
this fact into an interrogative and argumentative 
form against the use of infant baptism in the early 
church, thus : If the ordinance was then common, 
why was not Augustine baptized in his infancy ? 
Those same Confessions would answer this question, 
if faithfully consulted. The father of Augustine was 
not a Christian till late in life. In his Confessions, 
Augustine, in speaking to God of his mother, uses 
these words : '' Finally, her own husband, towards 
the ver}^ end of his earthly life, did she gain unto 
Thee."^ 

Speaking of living at home with his parents, in his 
sixteenth j^ear, and showing most unworth}^ youthful 
passions and habits, that affected his mother '' with a 
holy fear and trembling," he says, " My father was as 
yet but a catechumen, and that but recently." ^ 



8 His. ii. 226 and 707 ; note 1. 

4 Confessions of St. Augustine, B. ix. cli. 9. Wiley & Putnam : Is'ew 
York. 18ii. 

5 Do. B. ii.,cli. 3. 



AN OBJECTIOI^ COKSIDERED. 213 

Earlier than this, and when, probably, he was 
somewhat under ten years of age, he had a dangerous 
attack of illness, and eagerly sought baptism as a 
cleansing for death and heaven, which his mother pre- 
pared to grant, when he recovered. He then says, 
^' And so, as if I must needs be again polluted should 
I live, my cleansing was deferred, because the defile- 
ments of sin would, after that washing, bring greater 
and more perilous guilt." Then, speaking of his 
father in immediate connection with this delay of 
baptism, he adds: " He did not yet believe." ^ 

The paganism of the father, therefore, stood in the 
way of the infant baptism of Augustine. If it be said 
that his mother, Monica, was a Christian at his birth, 
and might have had him baptized if it had been usage, 
this must be replied : His mother, as we have seen 
by tiie quotation, was hindered by the erroneous 
notion of the age, — that the rite should be deferred 
to a time as near to death as they could trust their 
judgment in determining. Moreover, according to 
the sentiment and practice of those times, the will of 
the father ruled in important acts for the child. 

This accorded with the judgment of Monica, as her 
son quotes her advice to those wives Avho opposed the 
will of their husbands: ''From the time they heard 
the marriage writings read to them they should 
account them as indentures, whereby they were made 
servants ; and so remembering their condition, not set 
themselves up against their lords." -^ 

And the more likely would Monica be to follow her 

6 "lUe nondum crediderat." Do. B. i., cli. 11. 

7 Do. B. ix., ch. 9. 



214 THE CHURCH AND HER CHILDREN. 

own advice, since Patricius, her husband, was a man 
of quick temper, harsh in his manner, imperious in 
his rule, and dissolute in his morals as a husband. 

It is affirmed that Jerome was not baptized till he 
was about thirty years of age, and on an occasion at 
Rome, although born of Christian parents. There 
may be reasons for such an affirmation ; but, so far as 
appears, the statement is a traditional and unexamined 
one, based on the interpretation that Erasmus gives 
to two expressions in two of Jerome^s letters. 

In writing to Damasus, the bishop of Rome, he 
asks, as he says, information from that city " where I 
took on me the garments of Christ." ^ 

Xot receiving immediate reply, he wrote again for 
the information, with a varied allusion again to what 
is assumed to have been his baptism : '' As I formerly 
wrote you, I having taken on me the vestment of Christ 
in the Roman city," &c. ^ 

This expression, '' receiving the vestment of Christ," 
may be a synonj'm for baptism, and it may be that he 
here refers to his entrance on the monkish life and 
habits while a student at Rome. The garments of 
the nuns were called Christi tunicam^ Christi flam- 
meum^ — the coat, the veil of Christ; and those ex- 
pressions of Jerome would well designate the vest- 
ments of the monks. But be the interpretation what 
it may, here is all the evidence, so far as common 
sources furnish it, that Jerome was not baptized in 
infancy. 

The name of Ambrose has sometimes been used to 

8 " Umle olim Christi vestamenta suscepi." Ep. Ivii 

9 " Cliristi vestem in Rornana urbe suscipiens," &c. 



AN OBJECTION COKSIDEEED. 215 

show that infant baptism was not common in the daj^s 
of his infancy, since he was not baptized till after his 
nomination as bishop of Milan, and only eight days 
before his ordination to that office. All which is true 
as to the bishop ; but it makes no point for those ad- 
ducing his case, since there is no evidence that his 
parents were Christian when he was born. His 
father was a Roman nobleman, and governor of 
Gaul ; and there is not only nothing to show that he 
Avas not a pagan, but many things making it probable 
that he was. After Ambrose had come into middle 
life, his mother is spoken of as a Christian widow at 
Rome, and so probably came late herself, as well as 
her distinguished son, into the faith of Christ. 

Not one of these seven cases, therefore, helps to 
disprove the use of infant baptism in the days of those 
fathers. 



CHAPTER XXVII. 

THE QUESTIOi^ BEFORE COUITCILS AGAIK. 

'TTT'E move now sixty years and more backward 
^ V toward the times of the apostles : from the 
bishop of Milan, A.D. 368, to the council of 
Neocgesarea, A.D. 314, and to the council of Elvira, 
A.D. 305. If this rite sprung up after the days of 
the apostles, Ave ought very soon, in our backward 
movement toward them, to find it obscured and re- 
sisted and just struggling into place and use, as all 
innovations in popular usage are compelled to gain 
position and permanence. But the recognition of the 
ordinance in the quotation about to be made from the 
canons of the council of Neocaasarea is as clear and 
sharply defined and generally conceded as any thing 
in Augustine or Jonathan Edwards. 

These early councils, not unlike the ministerial 
associations of our day, often entertained professional 
discussions, and solved, if possible, the doubts of any 
one on practical questions. Among the various items 
submitted to this council for opinion was this : 
whether a woman enceinte^ and wishing baptism, 
should be baptized in her present condition, or delay 
the dedication till after the birth of the child. This 
question became a practical one, because of the doubt 

216 



THE QUESTION BEFORE COUNCILS AGAIN. 217 

that would lie after the birth of the child, whether or 
not it was baptized in the baptism of its mother. An 
historical fact or two will show the occasion of this 
question, and in what light the council must receive 
and answer it. 

We have seen by ample testimony that Christian 
baptism was at first only an adoption and elevation of 
Jewish proselyte baptism, as found and practised in 
the times of John the Baptist, and of Christ and his 
apostles. Then, when Gentile parents, father or 
mother, or both, became proselytes to Judaism, they 
became Jews through the rite of baptism. And when 
they received the rite they were required to bring 
their children also to receive it, — their daughters of 
thirteen years and a day and under, and their sons of 
twelve years and a day and under. Nor could any 
parent be received unless this condition concerning 
children be complied with. But a practical question 
came up for the decision of the Rabbles : whether a 
child born after the baptism of the mother, and she 
being enceinte at the time of her baptism, must be 
baptized in order, to become fully and properly a Jew. 
Their ruling runs thus: ''If a woman enceinte 
become a proselyte and be baptized, her child needs 
not baptism when it is born." ^ 

This decision was based on the specific theory of 
the Jews, that when a Gentile passed over as one of 
an unclean nation to become a Jew, baptism cleansed 
or purified both him and his posterity, if yet unborn. 
Now, as infant baptism in the Christian Church had 



1 LiGHTFOOT, vol. 11. 118. London, Folio, 1684. 
19 



218 THE CHURCH AND HER CHH^DREN. 

for its original and model this infant proselyte bap- 
tism of the Jews, it was quite natural that the question 
that the Rabbles answered should re-appear before a 
Christian council, and in a time so near to the 
apostles that we may suppose the council knew very 
well the theory and practice of the apostolic Church. 
The scruple that raised it in the Jewish mind would 
raise it also in the Christian mind. We must con- 
sider, too, that at the time of this council the Jewish 
Church was vigorous and proselyting ; and Jewish 
refusal to baptize an infant in th-e case supposed must 
have been known to the council, and so stimulate 
them to discussion and discrimination on the question 
submitted. They gave this answer : — 

'' As to a woman enceinte^ it is proper for her to be 
enlightened when she pleases, for in this the mother 
communicates nothing to the offspring. " ^ 

It will be noticed that the opinion of the council 
is directly opposed to the opinion of the Rabbies. The 
decisions are opposite of necessity, from the opposite 
theories of the two parties. With the Jew, baptism 
was a ceremonial cleansing of a stock, — a race, — 
''thee and thy seed." If so, the unborn child must 
share in its effects with the mother. With the coun- 
cil the purification implied in baptism, whether typ- 
ical or actual, was personal only, and confined in its 
effects to the single subject receiving it. Those ef- 

2 Yiepl KVO^opovGTjq otl del <}>o)Ti^eadcu * dnoTC povXerai. Ovdev yap ev 
TovT(I) KOLvuvel 7] TiKTovoa TO) TLKTOfj,£VGj. Conc Neoc^es. Can. vi. 

* A word here is rendered " enlightened," which the lexicons would have warranted one in 
rendering " baptized," since those early church fathers used it as the synonym of that word. 
But we wish so faithfully to use these old witnesses as to avoid the appearance even of an 
argumentative translation. 



THE QUESTION BEFOEE COUNCILS AGAIN. 219 

fects could not become hereditarj^, and so the unborn 
cliild could not receive it through its mother. 

The action of the council of Neocsesarea in this case 
throws a strong light on our path of investigation ; 
for it is a bodj^ of clergymen who speak, and not 
one man ; and their answer is to a question imply- 
ing doubts, and so is given after deliberation. There 
is, moreover, no implication in what they say, that 
the rite as for infants was a mere human notion, and 
might be performed or neglected on any child at the 
option of the parent. They give opinion in the case 
as if the ordinance was apostolic and in common 
practice. 

We gain another item of evidence from the council 
of Elvira in Spain, A.D. 305, in the form of infant 
church-membership. The council is laying down 
rules for the treatment of those who have apostatized 
and then wish to return to the true Church. 

'' If any one shall go over from the Church catholic 
to any heresy, and then would return again to the 
Church, penitence should not be denied to him, be- 
cause he has discovered his sin. Let him exercise 
repentauQe for ten years, and after ten years he ought 
to be admitted to the communion. But, if infants 
have been carried over, they ought to be taken back- 
immediately, because they have not sinned by their 
own fault." ^ 

3 "Si quis cle catliolica ecclesia ad liseresim transitum fecerit, rur- 
susqiie ad ecclesiam recurrerit, placiiit Imic poenitentiam nou esse 
denegandaui, eo quod cognoverit peccatuin sunni ; qui etiam decern 
annis agat pa^nitentiam ; ciii post decern annos pr?estari comnmnio 
debet. Si vero infantes fuerint transdncti, quod non suo vitio pec- 
caverint, incunctanter recepi debent." — Cone. Eliber. can. xxii. 



220 THE CHURCH AKD HEK CHILDREN. 

This canon evidently has in view two classes of 
apostates, — those who went over to heresy as adults, 
and knowingly, and those who were carried over by 
their parents in their tender and irresponsible years. 
Tlie canon contemplates the restoration of both to 
the communion of the catholic Church, as having dis- 
covered their error and wishing to be restored. One 
class it is proposed to restore after ten years' peni- 
tence, and the other class immediately on application, 
incunctanter. Plainly, the first class are church-mem- 
bers. The language of the canon referring to them 
is not pertinent to a catechumen. No catechumen 
could be said to go out from the Church, and return 
to the Church; nor do the fathers so speak. But the 
canon couples the two classes in the same expressions 
as to going out of the Church, and being restored to 
the Church ; thus showing that both had membership. 
Therefore the infants of the canon had been baptized, 
as baptism was indispensable to membership. If they 
had not been baptized, they must have taken the 
position and processes of catechumens. This would 
require instruction and delay ; but the council says, 
let them be '' taken back immediately." The evi- 
dence of infant baptism in this canon appears to be 
unimpeachable. 



CHAPTER XXVIIl. 

THE SIXTY-SIX BISHOPS, AND CYPKIAn's LETTER 

TO EIDUS. 

"TTT"E come now fifty years nearer to the apos- 
V V ties, when we bring Cyprian, and sixty-five 
other bishops, on the stand. If any reader of this 
historical argument is yet sceptical, his special atten- 
tion is called to the testimony about to be introduced, 
both in regard to its positive nature, and to the time 
when it was furnished. 

It was A.D. 253, that a large meeting of African 
bishops was held at Carthage. It was one of those 
informal meetings in the ancient Church, held occa- 
sionally at convenient centres, by the pastors of the 
territory. They met for mutual improvement, and 
for the consideration of any question presented that 
might concern the welfare of the Church. 

At this meeting sixty-six were present. What 
other topics were raised for consultation we are not 
informed ; but, Fidus, a country pastor, presented by 
letter two questions. One was, whether an infant 
might receive baptism before it was eight days old. 
This question Fidus accompanies with an argument 
in the negative. He urges that earlier than the 
eighth day the babe would seem to be so unfinished 

19* 221 



222 THE CHURCH AND HER CHILDREl!^. 

and unclean that men would revolt from giving to it 
the usual kiss of welcome into the church. He 
makes much also of the fact that circumcision was 
prescribed for the eighth day, and insists that the 
rule of initiation in that form should hold in this. 
He also urges other things against the baptism of an 
infant before the eighth day. 

The question and argument of Fidus appear to 
have been very freely discussed by the bishops, and 
their result was unanimous. The duty of condens- 
ing their opinions, and making reply to Fidus, was 
devolved on Cyprian. This letter of Cyprian to Fidus 
is preserved. In the edition of his works by Parme- 
lius, and by the Benedictines, it is the fifty-ninth 
epistle; in the Oxford edition of Fell, it is the sixty- 
fourth. We introduce here so much of it as will set 
forth distinctly the historical genealogy of infant 
baptism in its pedigree toward the apostles. 

" But as to the case of infants, who, you said, 
ought not to be baptized within the second or third 
day of their birth ; and as to your point, that the law 
of ancient circumcision should be regarded, and a 
child not be baptized and sanctified within the eighth 
day of its birth, — it seemed quite otherwise to all of 
us in council. No one agreed to the thing that you 
thought ought to be done. . . . 

'' And therefore, brother dearlj^ beloved, this was 
our conclusion in council, that no one ought to be 
kept back by us from baptism and from the grace of 
God, who is merciful and kind and tender toward all. 
For while we think that attention and regard should 
be had for the wants of all, we think that we ought 



THE BISHOPS, A^D CYPRIAN'S LETTER. 223 

to do this especially for infants and the new-born, 
who seem to claim our aid and the divine compassion 
the more, in that from their hour of birth, wailing 
and weeping, they do nothing except to implore 
aid." 1 

This epistle of the martyr bishop of Carthage is 
worthy of special attention. As a witness concern- 
ing the ordinance of infant baptism, it has a leading 
and commanding place among the ancients. It is a 
genuine epistle of Cyprian, and as well authenticated 
as any of the works of any of the fathers. Jerome 
and Augustine have quoted it so freely that almost 
every passage of it may be found in their works. 
And they lived so near to the time of its author, that 
we cannot suppose it possible that they were duped 
by a forgery. Particular notes should be made on 
the letter as evidence worthy of division, and a stud- 
ied attention in our discussion. 

(1.) The question submitted by Fidus. It is 
sometimes the case that a question well put gives 
more information than the answer. It is in a meas- 



1 Quantum vero ad causam iufantium pertinet, quos dixisti intra 
secundum vel tertium diem, quo nati sunt, constitutes baptizari non 
oportere, et considerandum esse legem circumcisionis antiquse, ut 
intra octavum diem eum qui natus est baptizandum et sacrifican- 
dum non putares, longe aliud in concilio nostro omnibus visum est. 
In lioc enim quod tu putabas esse faciendum, nemo consensit. 

Et idcirco, frater carissime, ligec fuit in concilio nostra sententia, 
a baptasmo atque a gratia Dei, qui omnibus misericors et benignus 
et pius est, neminem per nos debere probiberi. 

Quod .cum circa universos observandum sit, atque retinendum, 
magis circa infantes ipsos et recens natos obsesvandum putamus, 
qui hoc ipso de ope nostra, ac de divina misericordia plus merentur, 
quod in primo statim nativitatis suae ortu plorantes ac fientes nibil 
aliud f aciunt quam deprecantur. — Ep. Iviii. — Ox. Ed. Ixiv. 



224 THE CHUItCH AND HER CHH^DEEN. 

ure so in this case. The inquiry is a large revelation 
on the subject of infant baptism at that time. For in 
it Fidus assumes the validity and universality of the 
ordinance. It is no part of his inquiry whether the 
rite shall be administered. By the very terms in 
which he puts his question he concedes this. The 
scriptural authority for the ordinance, or its propri- 
ety, does not lie in any doubt in his mind. A ques- 
tion so sharp and so precise in its point could arise 
only where infant baptism, by common consent, was 
assumed, granted, and practised as a Christian ordi- 
nance. The question of Fidus is simply one of time : 
May the rite be administered before the child is eight 
days old ? Would such a question ever arise in a 
Baptist community ? And the discussion and answer 
of the question concede all that Fidus concedes in it, 
as to the prevalence of the rite. Were the ordinance 
at that time an innovation, or had it intruded itself 
into the Church within the memory of some of the 
aged ministers in the assembly, such a question could 
not have come in and been discussed, under so full 
an assumption and admission of its apostolical au- 
thority. Not only is its divine institution as fully 
conceded as adult baptism, but the council say, 
" We think that we ought to do this especially for 
infants and the new-born." They thus call for it a 
more prompt and prominent attention than for adult 
baptism. 

(2.) The connection that Fidus makes between 
baptism and circumcision. He argues that the rule 
of baptism must be the same as the rule of circum- 
cision, as to time, and that, therefore, the only proper 



THE BISHOPS, AKD CYPEIAN'S LETTER. 225 

day for the administration is the eighth. Is it an 
"undesigned and untaught conincidence that he here 
presents ? Why does he connect the two rites at all ? 
Why make such a connection of them in the eighth 
day ? He evidently regards the two as initiatory to 
the Church under its ancient and modern administra- 
tion, and the latter as taking the place of the former. 
Hence baptism is here called " the spiritual circum- 
cision." All this is significant as found in the letter 
of a bishop living so near to the times of the apos- 
tles. We cannot escape the conviction that this con- 
necting of the two rites, and this law of time, and 
the use of the word circumcision as the synonym for 
baptism, in the letters before us, are the result of 
tradition and instruction from the apostles, and that 
the latter ordinance comes by their authority in the 
place of the former. If such were the teaching and 
belief of that early day, we can easily explain these 
expressions and allusions and reasonings. Otherwise 
the coincidences are very strangely accidental, lying 
even totally outside the problem of the calculation of 
chances that they would ever occur. 

(3.) The large section of the Church represented 
in this council. The number of bishops is sixty-six. 
At that early day, A.D. 253, this number must have 
represented a large portion of the African Churches ; 
for in the best days of Christianity on that continent 
the number of bishoprics did not exceed five hun- 
dred. This body, then, is no local clique of the 
clergy, drawn together on some principle of doctrinal 
or politic affinity. Wide geographical boundaries 
mark the limits from which they come. It is a pro- 



226 THE CHUECH AND HER CHn^DREN. 

miscuous gathering, not knowing, till gathered, to 
what questions they w^ere to make answer. A draft 
by lot on the Church at large would not probably 
have brought together fairer representatives of the 
Christian faith and practice concerning infant baptism 
than were found in that Carthaginian body. 

(4.) Their perfect agreement in answer to the 
question of Fidus. There is a grateful unanimity 
among them, for one who loves the sacrament in 
question, as one of the foundation stones of Zion. 
'^ No one agreed to the thing that you thought ought 
to be done," neino consensit. The waiting for bap- 
tism to the eighth day of the child was unanimously 
overruled. This unity of opinion and result assures 
us that they reasoned from a unity of faith and of 
practice. 

Such agreement in faith and practice through the 
Church, and out of which this unanimity in advice to 
Fidus sprang, may have resulted from either of two 
causes. There may have been a universal prevalence 
of the teaching of Christ and his apostles, that infant 
baptism is a divine institution in the Church. Or 
there may have been a universal prevalence of such 
a rite, and a universal belief in it as of divine origin, 
while it was only a forgery and an imposition among 
the original and authoritative rites of the Church. 
In determining which of these causes did, probably, 
lead the council to this unity of advice to Fidus, we 
come to the final reflection proposed on the letter in 
question : — 

(5.) The time w4ien this assembly was convened. 
Some of its members could, very like, make their 



THE BISHOPS, AND CYPRIAN's LETTER. 227 

memories cover nearly half the period between the 
time of their session and the time of living apostles. 
They knew the generation who knew the apostles. 
In so narrow space of time could infant baptism have 
sprung up of human device, and established itself so 
widely and so absolutely ? If this rite be an innova- 
tion and corruption among the institutions of the 
apostles, it must have come in by slow introduction. 
Three-quarters of a century would hardly suffice for 
so radical and fundamental a change in the constitu- 
tion of the Church of God. 

For it must be firmly carried in mind, that seventy- 
five years then and now are, practically, two very 
different periods of time. With our routes of travel 
by land and sea, and lively and constant going to and 
fro ; with our printing press, prolific in daily, weekly, 
and volume issues ; with national and international 
postal systems; with locomotives flying across the 
continents like birds of passage ; with telegraphic 
wires gathering into one centre the present leading 
thoughts of five continents in six hours, — our years are 
half centuries to those of Cyprian and old Carthage. 
Then thought went on foot from city to city, and by 
word of mouth from country to country, or ; if it took 
carriage, it was the lumbering and contracted vehicle 
of the copyist and parchment. Then the protracted 
absence of the African Livingstone would have 
created little surprise. In seventy-five such years 
could an innovation, an imposition, creep in and 
carry the entire African Church ? But for the sake 
of an inquiry, allow three-quarters of a century to 
be a sufficient time for this. 



228 THE CHUECH AND HER CHILDREN. 

Between the time of this meeting at Carthage and 
the death of the last apostle was about one hundred 
and fifty years. Divide the time into two equal 
parts. 

Could the invention and imposition of this rite 
have taken place in the last half of this interval ? 
But that would have been within the lifetime and 
knowledge of these bishops. If an innovation of 
their own day, and known to them, could they have 
gone through the discussion of the question with Fi- 
dus, and come to that unanimous and written result 
with no intimation or breathed suspicion that the or- 
dinance was of human invention, and so should be 
left with the widest range of human judgment to per- 
form when it pleased, or not all ? The entire teaching 
and spirit of the letter show that they supposed they 
were dealing with a divine ordinance, which could 
not be true if introduced within their memory and 
knowledge. 

Then, on the other hand, could the innovation have 
taken place during the first half of this interval? 
But it is claimed by those who regard this ordinance 
as of man's devising, that it is a great violation and 
departure from the primitive and apostolical constitu- 
tion of the Church. It is an innovation and change, 
say they, of vast magnitude. Could it have been 
wrought in seventy-five years, no pure and protesting 
antipaedobaptist minority remaining, nor any record 
of the violation thus done to God's Church ? No 
person, paper or tradition, to prevent the unity of 
opinion and result in that body of sixty-six ? Could 
the change have been wrought in those first seventy- 



THE BISHOPS, AND CYPEIAN's LETTER. 229 

five years, following the apostles, when there were so 
many living and influential men in the Church w^hom 
the apostles themselves had trained and indoctrinated ? 
On the theory that infant baptism is a human de- 
vice, and a forgery thrust in among apostolic institu- 
tions, the Letter of Cyprian to Fidus is a vast per- 
plexity. The narrow and definite question that it 
answers, the number of bishops for whom it speaks, 
their perfect unanimity in opinion, and their nearness 
to the apostolic age, are confusing thoughts, if we as- 
sume that this rite is not of the apostles. If it be an 
invention of ritualists, begun so early, carried so 
thoroughly and widely, and all knowledge and history 
of its corrupt human beginning lost so profoundly, 
and all within one hundred and fifty years of the 
apostolic age, then it is a marvel in Christian history 
without a parallel. We turn to those rejecting this 
ordinance for any comfortable disposition of this let- 
ter. Their inventive theory, in the face of Cyprian's 
Letter, would almost make it possible to forge pas- 
sages into the Declaration of American Independence. 

20 



CHAPTER XXIX. 

THE TESTIMONY OF ORIGEN. 

"TTT^E come now, in our progress, to consult the 
V V works of Origen. This brings us to a point 
for observation much nearer to the apostles ; for he 
was born at Alexandria, A.D. 185. He was of a 
Christian ancestry, parents and grandparents, accord- 
ing to Eusebius.i 

His father, as a devout Christian, required him, 
when a boy, to commit to memory, daily, some portion 
of the Scriptures ; and, when the father suffered mar- 
tyrdom, Origen, then a lad of seventeen, wished to 
suffer with him, and was kept back only by his mother. 
Under the persecution, the whole property of the 
Origen family was confiscated. Origen became a cate- 
chetic and philosophical teacher, and a devout Chris- 
tian, as well as austere ; for he ate the coarsest food, 
went barefoot, and slept on the ground. He sold his 
large and valuable pagan library for a perpetual in- 
come of about seven cents a day, for a living, and so 
gave himself up to study and teach and propagate 
Christianity, while the pagans watched his house and 



1 'E/c npoyovuv Kara XpcGrbv. — £ccl. His, Lib. vi. c. 19. 
230 



THE TESTIMONY OF ORIGEN. 231 

walks for opportunity to assassinate him. Not only 
was he " master of the literature and science of that 
age,'' says Dr. Murdock, but he " was beyond ques- 
tion the first biblical scholar of the age."^ 

Guericke calls Origen '' the most learned and stim- 
ulating, and in all respects one of the most distin- 
guished, of the primitive fathers, and one who has 
exerted an abiding influence upon the history of the- 
ology." ^ 

So descending from a Christian ancestry, and so 
educated in things pertaining to the Christian Church, 
any testimony he may give on the question in hand 
should have great weight. Standing so near to the 
apostles, the light between him and them could, in- 
deed, be but little obscured. 

Born within eighty-five years of the time of a liv- 
ing apostle, and whose grandfather, very like, may 
have known " the beloved disciple," Origen had no 
need to go out of his own family to know the theory 
and practice of the apostolic Church in regard to in- 
fant baptism. When, therefore, Origen says, that 
*' the Church received the order from the apostles to 
give baptism to infants also," as he does in his Com- 
mentary on the Epistle to the Romans,^ we can read- 
ily see that his father ma)^ have learned this from men 
to whom apostles taught it personally. 

It will be noticed that we are coming now into 
close quarters with the apostles themselves. Our 



2M0SHEIM, i. 167. 

3 Ancient Churcli, Sliedd's Trans, p. 227. 

4 " Ecclesia ab apostolis traditionem suscepit etiam parvulis bap- 
tism iini dare." 



232 THE CHURCH AND HER CHTLDREN. 

converging lines of evidence are bringing both par- 
ties in ttiis investigation into a very sharp and closing 
angle. Geologists often find bowlders that have been 
carried by natural forces to great distances from their 
original situations and home mountains. In those gla- 
cier periods and huge ice-floes from the north, these 
rocky masses were carried southward along the con- 
tinent ; and the geologist, finding them isolated and 
peculiar, as he goes northward, can readily tell from 
their characteristics, to what kind of rocky ranges 
and strata he is approaching ; and he at length finds 
the mountain itself, whence the fragments started. 
As we have been working our way slowly backward 
toward the apostolic and primitive formations, we 
have been meeting these ecclesiastical bowlders. 
They have a likeness in common, while they are 
found in the converoinof lines of a common drift. It 
looks now as if we should find their common starting 
place and home in the mountains that are round about 
Jerusalem. If so, they will probably be proved to be 
part and parcel of the stones of Mount Zion itself. 
We have just passed by the Cyprian bowlder. To 
those wishing to turn it aside we think it will prove 
to be the insujyerabile saxum. The Origenistic group 
is just before us. 

In his eighth homily on Leviticus, Origen presses 
the proofs of human depravity ; and, to the other 
points, he makes this addition : — 

" To all which things this also can be added, that, 
since the baptism of the Church is given for the 
remission of sins, baptism, according to the usage of 
the Church, is also given to infants, when, if there 



THE TESTIMONY OF OBIGEN. 233 

were nothing in infants that needed forgiveness, this 
grace of baptism would seem to be superfluous."^ 

Here Origen attempts to prove one of his peculiar 
notions by citing the rite of infant baptism as a com- 
mon practice of the Church. 

In another of his commentaries he brings out the 
same thought, and appeals to the same usage : — 

" As the occasion gives me the opportunity, I will 
notice a thing that causes frequent discussions among 
the brethren. Infants are baptized for the forgive- 
ness of sins. What sins ? Or when did they sin ? 
Or how can there be any reason for the laver for 
infants, unless for the reason I gave just now, that 
no one is free from taint, not if his life had been but 
one day on the earth. For this reason infants are 
baptized, because in the sacrament of baptism natural 
corruption is washed away."^ 

In his exposition of St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans, 
he says that the Levitical sin-offering for every new- 
born child, indicated that any child, even of one day, 



^ " Addi Ms etiam ilhid potest, iit reqiiiratTir quid caiisre sit, cum 

baptisma ecclesiae in remissionem peccatorum detiir, secundum ec- 

clesige observantiam etiam parvulis baptismum dari; cum utique si 

nihil esse in parvulis quod ad remissionem deberet et indulgentiam 

pertinere, gratia baptismi superllua videretur." — Horn. viii. in Lev. 
c. 12. 

6 " Quod frequenter inter fratres qureritur, loci occasione commo- 
tus, retracto. Parvuli baptizantur in remissionem peccatorum. 
Quorum peccatorum? Yel quo tempore peccaverunt? Aut quo 
modo potest uUa lavacri in parvulis ratio subsistere, nisi juxta ilium 
sensum de quo paulo ante diximus : nullus mundus a sorde, nee si 
unius diei quidem fuerit vita ejus super terram ? Et quia per bap- 
tismi sacramentum nativitatis sordes deponuntur, propterea baptiz- 
antur et parvuli." — Horn, in Lucam, xiv. 
20* 



234: THE CHUBCH AND HER CHILDKEK. 

had sins to be remitted ; and then he proceeds to 
say; — 

" For this same thing the Church has received from 
the apostles the order to administer baptism to in- 
fants. For they, to whom the divine mysteries were 
committed, well knew that there is a natural corrup- 
tion of sin in all, which must be washed away by 
water and the Spirit. " ^ 

This testimony of Origen to the practice of infant 
baptism, in his times and earlier, has the greater 
force, as it comes in the easy and natural way of 
allusions. He has no point to establish by prov- 
ing that it was practised. He makes incidental refer- 
rence to it, as well known and common practice. He 
assumes that everybody knows the fact, and he 
alludes to it merely to use it. 

He also says that the Church does this by an order 
or tradition from the apostles. This is direct, posi- 
tive, und without the possibility of an ambiguity. 
Indeed, no quotation that we have made from him 
is open to that verbal criticism and affected scepti- 
cism, by which the vitalitj^ and force are sometimes 
expelled from a well-cited passage. Origen, as 
quoted, is so explicit as to be beyond the power of 
misunderstanding and misapplication. 

It remains only to speak, in a word, of the authen- 
ticity and genuineness of these quotations from Origen. 



"^ " Pro hoc et ecclesia ab apostolis traditionem siiscepit etiam par- 
viilis baptismum dare. Sciebant enim illi qiiibus iiiysteriorum secreta 
commissa sunt divinoruin, quia essent in omnibus genuinse sordes 
peccati, quae per aquani et Spirutum ablui deberent." — Com. in 
Epis. ad. Rom. Lib. v. 



THE testimo:n"y of oeigen. 235 

The works from which we have extracted them re- 
main to us only in Latin translations, the original 
Greek having perished. The homily on Leviticus^ 
and the commentarj^ on the Epistle to the Romans, 
were translated by Rufinus, and the homily on St. 
Luke by Jerome. Both these translators lived 
within one hundred years of the times of Origen ; 
and, being learned men, they must have known 
whether he misstated the practice of the Church in 
this rite. If they suspected him of error, we cannot 
suppose they would have translated and given his 
erroneous teachings to the world without caveat or 
protest. 

It is ^true, when the translated works of Origen 
were collected, some spurious writings were gathered 
with them, and attributed to him. But the homily 
on Luke could not have been one of them ; since 
Jerome owns to the fact that he translated it, and 
no one questions but that Rufinus translated the 
other works quoted. 

It is also true that Rufinus intentionally made 
omissions, in his translations, of passages in which he 
regarded Origen as unorthodox, though he is not 
accused of making interpolations. As Rufinus 
was an ardent admirer of Origen, we may presume 
the passages in question would have been omitted 
if they inculcated what the Church had not accepted, 
and so would endanger the reputation of their author. 
Besides, they are sustained fully in sentiment by the 
passage in the homily on St. Luke, over whose genu- 
ineness there hangs no doubt. It is to be considered, 
too, that these translations were made while their 



236 THE CHURCH AND HER CHH^DEEN. 

Greek originals were common ; and so any variations 
from the Greek would be liable to immediate dis- 
covery and exposure. 

Neander, alluding to the statement of Origen, that 
the Church received the order from the apostles to 
baptize infants, makes this remark : — 

" An expression, by the way, which cannot be re- 
garded as of much weight in this age, when the 
inclination was so strong to trace every institution, 
which was considered of special importance, to 
the apostles."^ 

This remark of the eminent historian savors not a 
little of the theorist ; and it is a fair index to that un- 
fortunate fact in his history, that all his tiistorical 
evidences on infant baptism in the first four centuries 
are for the institution as apostolical, while his philo- 
sophizing on the facts is against it. There appears 
to be, throughout his great work, a purpose wrought 
out to neutralize the legitimate influence of the facts 
that he adduces on this subject. 

8 Ch. His. i. 314. 



CHAPTER XXX. 



TERTULLIAK, 



"TTTE come next in order to take the testimony of 
V V TertuUian, a presbyter in the Church at Car- 
thage. He was born there, of pagan parents, about 
A.D. 160. This brings us a quarter of a century 
nearer to the apostles than the times of Origen, and 
within a century of the time when the most of the 
New Testament was written. He was one of the 
most influential and learned of the authors of his 
times. Guericke esteems him as one of " the three 
leading and representative minds in the Church at 
the close of the second century." ^ 

" In the Latin language," says Mosheim, " scarcely 
any writer of this century elucidated and defended the 
Christian religion, except TertuUian." " He had 
much learning, but lacked discretion and judgment." ^ 
He was erratic, and even heretical, in some of his 
religious views, being for years a Montanist. But 
these imperfections can in no manner impeach his 
ability or fidelity in making historical allusions to the 
ordinance and use of infant baptism, as then held and 
practised. 

1 Ancient Church, 146; note 2. 2 EccI. His. i. 122, 3. 

237 



238 THE CHUECH AXD HEK CHILDREN. 

He wrote a treatise on the subject of baptism. 
Holding to the doctrine that the stain of original 
sin attaches to every child of Adam, and that bap- 
tism is efficacious to wash it away, he says, — 

" Since it is agreed that no one can obtain salva- 
tion without baptism, according to that marked say- 
ing of the Lord, Except a man be born of water he 
cannot have salvation, scruples arise, and the rash dis- 
sertations of some, how, by that rule, am' apostle could 
be saved, excepting St. Paul. For since Paul, only 
of them all, received the baptism of Christ, the others 
who failed of the water of Christ, must either be in 
great danger, that the rule may stand, or the rule is 
rescinded, if salvation is obtained without baptism." ^ 

TertuUian here makes baptism a logical necessity 
for salvation. If, then, infants did not receive it, 
they must have incurred the great peril, as those 
"- who failed of the water of Christ." 

Of course we have now nothinof to do with the 
truth or error of those notions about the taint of 
Adam's sin, and its supposed washing away in bap- 
tism and failure of salvation without the rite. We 
are concerned only with the practice of the ancient 
Church in this ordinance. But so earnestly did Ter- 
tuUian hold these views of the necessity of baptism, 

3 Quurn vero i^riescribitiir nemini sine bai:)tisino coinpetere salu- 
tein. ex ilia maxima prouuuciatione Domini, qui ait; nisi natiis ex 
aqua quis erit. non habet salntem : suboriuntur scnipuli, imo temprarii 
tractatus quonimdam, quo modo exista prae scrip tione apostolis salus 
competat, quos tinctos non invenimus in Domino, priet^r Paulum : 
imo, cum Paulus solus ex illis baptismum Christi induerir, aut 
prrejudicatum esse de c.Teterorum periculo, qui careanr aqua Chi'isti, 
nt prsescriptio salva sit ; aut rescimli praescriptionem, si etiam aoji 
tinctis salus statua est. — Tertull., De Bapiismo, c. 12. 



TEETULLIAK. 239 

that he put the duty on laymen to administer the 
rite, when death made the circumstances urgent. 
Yet with great caution they were to baptize : — 

" Let it suffice that you exercise this right only in 
extreme cases, when the circumstances of place or 
time or person urge it. Then the boldness of him 
helping will be allowable, when the danger of him 
needing is imperative." ^ 

Reading the passages now quoted from this eminent 
father, no one would doubt as to his theory and prac- 
tice in this matter, and from these would naturally 
and safely infer the custom of the Church in that day. 
There is, however, another passage in TertuUian that 
must be quoted and harmonized with the preceding, 
if, indeed, there is any discrepancj^, as some maintain. 

'' According to the condition and disposition and 
age, also, of every person, the delay of baptism is 
more useful, but especially for little children. For 
what reason is there, except in case of necessity, that 
the sponsors should be brought into danger, since 
they may fail to keep their promises through death, 
and may be deceived by the development of a sinful 
disposition. The Master indeed says. Forbid them 
not to come to me. Therefore, let them come when 
they are grown up ; let them come when they are in- 
structed, when they understancl whither they are to 
come. Let them be made Christians when they are 
able to know Christ. Why should their innocent 
age make haste for the forgiveness of sins ? . . . For 

4 Sufficiat scilicet in necessitatibus utaris, siciiM ant loci aut tem- 
poris aut personge conditio compellit. Tunc enim constantia succur- 
rentis excipitnr cum urget circumstantia periclitantis. — Do. c. xvii. 



240 THE CHURCH AND HER CHmOREN. 

cause no less, the unmarried should be delayed, for 
whom temptation is in preparation," &c.^ 

These passages from Tertullian are worthy of 
several specific remarks. 

(1.) What he here says is declaratory of infant 
baptism, as common usage at that day. He urges its 
delay for little children; he speaks of godfathers in 
the baptism of children; he recommends delay for 
those whose disposition has not yet shown its char- 
acter ; he quotes the command of our Lord concern- 
ing infants ; he counsels that they be kept back till 
they are grown up, till they have an education, till 
they know what the ordinance means, and can intel- 
ligently receive Christ. All this implies infants, and 
that it was usual to baptize them. 

(2.) He wishes to effect a change in the practice 
of the Church in this matter. Personal!}' , he does 
not favor early baptism, and presses his objections to 
it. He holds it to be indispensable to salvation, and 
provides for the administration in the case of a dying 
infant, even by the irregularity of lay baptism. Yet, 
where delay may be safe, he urges delay, as if sins 
committed after baptism could have remission only 

5 Itaqiie pro cujusque personse conditione ac dispositione, etiam 
SBtate, cimctatio baptisini utilior est; pnecipue tainen circiim par- 
vulos. Quid enim necesse est, si non tarn necesse, sponsores etiam 
periculo ingeri? Quia et ipsi per mortalitatera destituere promis- 
siones suas possiint, et proventu malre. indolis falli. Ait quidem 
Dorainus, nolite illos proliibere ad ine venire. Yeniant, ergo, duui 
adoleseunt, veniant dum discunt, dum quo veniant docentur. 
Fiant Cliristiani quum Christuin nosse potuerint. Quid festinat 
innocens aetas ad reuiissionem peccatoruni? . . . Non minori de 
causa inniipti quoque procrastinandi, in quibus tentatio prseparata 
est, etc. —Do. c. xviii. 



TEBTULLIAN. 241 

with peculiar difficulty. Virtually he advocates 
autipsedobaptist views in a paedobaptist Church. He 
leads off among the fathers in opposing the rite, ex- 
cept the peril of death call for it. He holds the 
two notions, that baptism must precede salvation, 
and that sins committed after the reception of the 
rite incur a very special danger. These two views 
led him to defer the rite as long as possible, yet be 
ready to grant it in extremities. He finds the custom 
of the Church in the way, and so seeks to work a 
revolution, showing thus ground for the remark of 
Mosheim, that he ''lacked discretion and judgment." 

(3.) The office of godfathers and godmothers had 
become an established fact at this time. He refers 
to such persons as well known, and as assuming a 
responsibilit}^ for the infant subjects of this rite well 
understood. Then the rite had been practised long 
enough to establish this prominent feature among 
the practices of the ancient Church. True, there 
were three classes of sponsors ; but plainly he 
refers to sponsors for infants, who may make up a 
sad moral character, and so endanger those who 
promised for them at their baptism. 

Whether he was orthodox or heterodox, consistent 
or inconsistent, in his own Church, is no question now 
with us. His historical declarations and allusions 
concerning this ordinance are all we want, and they 
are enough. 

(4.) As he wished to dispense with this rite for in- 
fants, why did he not press the point, that it was only 
a human institution so far as infants are concerned ? 
This would have been the best thing to be said by 

21 



242 THE CHUECH AND HKR CHILDEEN. 

him to carry his point; and, as born within sixty 
years of a living apostle, he should have known, and 
doubtless did know, what Avas apostolic custom. In 
his work, De Baptismo, he makes no allusion to it as 
of human invention, when it was for the highest 
interest and conclusion of his argument to do so. 

These extracts from the writings of this eminent 
father in the ancient Church cannot fail to m.ake the 
single impression, that infant baptism was a rite gen- 
erally accepted and practised at that very early day. 
We see not how one can take any other view of 
them, unless he comes up to the view out of a 
theory. And it shows the scarcity of material, and 
the frailty of the argument against this institution, 
when men quote Tertullian as opposing the rite as a 
novelty and an innovation. Even Neander says, 
'' Tertullian appears as a zealous opponent of infant 
baptism, a proof that the practice had not as yet 
come to be regarded as an apostolical institution, for 
otherwise he would hardly have ventured to express 
himself so strongly against it."^ 

On the contrary, his allusions to the practice are 
as to a rite generally accepted and used. He op- 
poses nothing as new, and makes no attack on a 
specified innovation. Himself is the innovator, and 
ur^es the Church to chano^e. With a stranofe inter- 
pretation of that saying of our Lord, '' Except a 
man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot 
enter into the kingdom of God," and with a notion 
of regeneration almost as crude as that of Nicode- 

6 Church History, i. 312. 



TEETULLIAN. 243 

mus, he holds baptism to be indispensable to salva- 
tion, but considers one's salvation endangered by 
sins committed after he has received the ordinance. 
So early had the theory of baptismal regeneration, 
and the very dangerous nature of sins following, 
taken definite form in the Church, the outworking 
of which idea, two and three centuries later, we have 
already detailed. In accordance with these views 
TertuUian naturally and logically and devoutly urged 
the Churcli to change her custom of early baptisms, 
and put the rite as late for the subject as it could '^be 
safely. The baptismal garment was, as the ascension 
robe, to be put on so late that there would be the 
least possible danger of soiling it. Therefore, the 
very opposition of TertuUian to infant baptism, and 
the reasons for his opposition, show that the ordi- 
nance had then an established and well-grounded 
reputation and favor in the Church. 



CHAPTER XXXI. 

IREN^TJS : " KEGEXERATED UNTO GOD." 

IRENJEUS has a jDassage that must have great 
weight in this investigation, if it be evident, that, 
under the words he uses, lie is referring to baptism. 
It may be said, in general, that Irenseus held fully to 
the dogma of man's total apostasy from God, and 
that his recovery is only through Christ. This 
recovery he often, if not generally, connects in time 
with baptism, calling it " the redemption," '' the 
restoration," "the renewal," ''the regeneration to a 
better life." He frequently couples regeneration 
with baptism ; as already and thus early in the 
Church the notion was beginning to foreshadow 
itself, that baptism in itself is operative and effica- 
cious to aid the new birth and insure salvation. The 
passage in question is a reference he makes to Christ, 
in his work '' Against Heresies." 

'' Being, therefore, a master, he had the age of a 
master ; not reprobating nor rising above man, nor 
violating in himself his own law for the human race, 
but sanctifying every period of life, through the 
resemblance there was to him in it. For he came to 
save all by himself; all, I say, who by him are regen- 
erated unto God : infants and little ones, and children 

244 



lEEN^US: '' EEGENEEATED UKTO GOD." 245 

and youth and seniors. Therefore he came through 
each several age, — being made an infant for infants, 
sanctifying infants ; a little one for little ones, sancti- 
fying those of that age, at the same time giving them 
an example of piety, justice, and subjection ; a j^outh 
for youths," &c,^ 

Whether this passage is pertinent or not, as evi- 
dence in this investigation on the early use of infant 
baptism, turns on the meaning of the phrase, " re- 
generated unto God," — renascimtur in Deum, It is 
obvious to remark, that to speak of infants as regen- 
erated unto God, meaning thereby the new birth 
spiritual as connected with the ordinary means of 
grace, is a very unusual expression. Such a term 
would be proper only in connection with the theory 
of baptismal regeneration. 

A wide context in Jewish usage, in the apostolic 
and previous age, and among the early fathers, can 
alone determine the meaning of Ireneeus in this pas- 
sage. 

The Jews were accustomed, in New Testament 
times and before, to call the baptism of a proselyte 
his " regeneration," his " new birth," or his '' being 
born again." 

1 Magister ergo existens magistri qiioqiie liabebat aetatem, non 
reprobans nee supergrediens hominem, neque solvens snam legem 
in se humani generis; sed oinnem aetateni sanctificans per illam qure 
ad ipsnni erat siinilitudineni. Omnes enini venit per semet ipsum 
salvare, omnes, inqnam, qui per emn renascuntur in Deum, infantes, 
et parvulos, et pueros, et juA^enes, et seniores. Ideo j)er omnem 
venit setatem; et infantibus infans f actus, sanctificans infantes, in 
parvulis parvulus, sanctificans banc ipsam babentes ?etatem; simul 
et exemplum illis pietatis effectus, et justiti?e et subjectionis ; in 
juvenibus juvenis, etc. — Lib. ii., c. 22, §4. 
21 



246 THE CHUECH AND HEU CHILDREK. 

These Jewish synonyms for baptism have their 
origin in times preceding the Christian, and they 
grow out of the Jewish idea of proselyte baptismr 
According to the theory and practice of the Jews, 
baptism converted a Gentile into a Jew : it made him 
the citizen of another nation ; it changed his nation- 
ality. It was to the Gentile a second nativity, a 
new birth civil. As to citizenship he was " born 
again." So the Rabbies called a proselyte, at bap- 
tism, recens natus. And Maimonides says, " Gentilis 
proselyta factus ; ecce est ut infans jam natus." 

When, therefore, we come down from those earlier 
Jewish times into the Christian and New Testament 
period, and have occasion to speak of persons as 
changing their spiritual nationality, these old Jewish 
and proselyte forms of expression need only to be 
spiritualized to convey the idea. One abjures the 
ruler of the darkness of this world, and becomes a 
subject in the kingdom of God's dear Son. He be- 
comes as " a little child " in doing it. After doing it 
he is as a '' new-born babe : " '' modo genitus infans." 
— Vulgate. As to his new king, kingdom, and citi- 
zenship, he is " born again," " renatus denuo." — VuU 
gate. The Jew saw fit to mark the changed nation- 
ality of the Gentile by the symbol of baptism, and 
the proselyte was natus ex aqua into the Jewish com- 
monwealth. And to every Gentile proposing this 
civil change into Judaism the Sanhedrim said, with 
inexorable words, " Verily, verily, we say unto thee, 
except a Gentile be born of water he cannot see the 
kingdom of Israel." 

Here were, then, in the Holy Land, and in the 



lEEN^US: '^ EEGEKERATED UNTO GOD." 247 

times of Christ, a symbolic ceremony, and a verbal 
expression for it, in common use and well understood. 
The idea set forth therewith was worldly, carnal, and 
hardl}^ semi-religious ; for the act brought the Gentile 
only toward the Church and not into it. 

For those about to exchange nationality and citi- 
zenship, the Lord Jesus desired a ceremony, a sj^mbol, 
and an expression of it. He had already taken, and 
was about to take, very many Jewish rites, cere- 
monies, symbols and phrases, and Christianize them 
for the new form of his old Church. Without, there- 
fore, introducing a new rite, and an obscure confusing 
terminology, he simply elevates this common cere- 
mony, symbol, and phrase of the Jews, and fills the 
whole with a spiritual import. 

Hence, easily and naturally, and divinely too, those 
synonyms for baptism have come into the New Testa- 
ment : " Born again," " born of water," '' washing 
of regeneration." They imply the visible, physical 
ceremony of baptism ; while they carry an import that 
is spiritual, and infinitely more than the visible. 

These synonyms for baptism of course re-appear in 
the Vulgate Latin Bible of the second century, and 
for St. John iii. e5, we have "nisi quis renatus fuerit 
ex aqua ;" and for Titus iii. 6, we have " per lava- 
crum regenerationis." ^ 

These Jewish synonyms for baptism appearing in 
the Greek of the New Testament, and re-appearing 
in the Latin Vulgate, they will of course be repro- 

2 "The laver of regeneration: a reference to baptism which 
might aU the more easily be exhibited as a laver, Tiovrpov etc." — 
liANGE in loco. 



248 TKE CHURCH AND HER CHILDREK* 

duced with variations by the Christian writers imme- 
diately following the apostles. Enough has, there- 
fore, been said to show the meaning of Irenseus in 
the phrase in question. Still, to set forth the con- 
clusion very clearly, we will quote additional testi- 
mony. 

Justin Martyr lived in the times of Irenseus, hav- 
ing been born about A.D. 114. No writings of the 
second century, now extant, are of more worth to 
Christian history ; and his Dialogue with Trypho, the 
Jew, is the first systematic treatise to Avin that an- 
cient people to Christianity. In one of his Apologies 
he thus speaks of baptism, and of the process of uni- 
ting with the Church : — 

The candidates " are led by us to some place where 
there is water ; and after the manner of regeneration 
by which we were regenerated, they are regenerated. 
In the name of God, the Father and Governor of 
all things, and of our Saviour Jesus Christ, and of 
the Holy Spirit, they are washed with water. For 
Christ said : ' Except ye be regenerated ye cannot 
see the kingdom of heaven.' ' And we have re- 
ceived from the apostles this reason for this ' [rite] . 
' There is pronounced over him who wishes to be 
born again, and has renounced his sins, the name of 
God, the Father and Governor of the universe ; and 
he who conducts the person to the laver to be 
washed, calls him by this name only.' " ^ 

^ '^neLT uyovTOt vtt' y/ncbv ev&a vdup ecrrt, kol rponov avayevvrjGeug bv 
Kot T^fielg avrol aveyevvyT^Tjfiev, ctvayevvcbvTaL. 'Ett' ovofiarog yap tov 
Ilarpof tC)V oTmv KaX ^eoTrorov Qeov, Kai tov 2wr?7pof jjfjxJv 'Itjoov XpiaTOu 
KttL IlvevfiaToc 'Ayiov kv tcj vdan tote hrvrpov 'notovvTau Kat yap 6 



IREN^US : " EEGENERATED UNTO GOD." 249 

Clemens Alexandrinus was contemporary with 
Irenseus, and would be quite likely to use the same 
technical phrases, and with the same import as 
Irengeus. In his controversy with the Gnostics he 
has occasion to use the baptismal terms ; for that sect 
added so much to the simple rites of baptism as some- 
times to make the converts to a pure Christianity feel 
that they had not received baptism enough to be 
complete Christians. 

We take only sentences enough from the argument 
of Clement to show his use of the words in question. 
^' Immediately on the baptism of the Christ, a voice 
from Heaven declared him beloved. — Being regener- 
ated, was Christ at that very time perfect ; or, as a 
most wicked thing, will it be said that he was yet 
lacking ? — As soon as baptized by John he becomes 
perfect. — He is perfected by the washing, and sanc- 
^tified by the descent of the Spirit. — He having been 
regenerated immediately obtained a completeness. — 
One having been regenerated, as in fact it is called, 
and having been enlightened, comes at once into a 
new state." ^ 

XpLGToq etTTsv : "Av firj uvayevvrj'dfjTe, ktTl. — Apol. Prim, ad Anton. 
Plum, c. Ixi. 

"And this food is called among us the Eucharist, of which no one 
is allowed to partake but the man who believes that the things which 
we teach are true, and who has been washed with the washing that 
is for the remission of sins, and unto regeneration." — Do., c. Ixvi. 

■* AvTLna fzev (SaTTTi^oixivG) rcj KvpcG) an' ovpavov enr/xyoe (puv^ fiaprvc 
TjyaTrr/fievov. — ^r/fjepov dvayevvrjOdt; o XpiGrd^ f/drj reXetog tortv ; rj bonep 
aTOTTDTaTOv, kTJiELTTjjg ; — "kfia tolvvv Toi) [3a7TTi^eGdat u.vrbv inro rov 
Icjdvvov, yiverai T£?i.etog, — TeTieiovTai 6e Xovrpc) nai tov Uvevfiarog rri 
KadoSo) aytdi^ETaL — ' kvayevvrjOevTEg, Evdecog to teXelov dnELTiTjcpafxEv. — 'O 
fLovov avvayEvvTjdEtg, (boTCELpovv kol to ovofia "e;t6"i, aal (pUTLaOEcg^ ccnT^'XTiaKTac 
fisv Tzapaxpvftaj ktX. — Pcadagog. Lib. i. c. 6. 



250 THE CHURCH AND HER CHILDREN. 

Obviously the " perfection/' the " completeness," 
the new state, here spoken of by Clement, is not 
spiritual, but ritual. And he is arguing to show that 
baptism, simple as Christ's, introduces one fully into 
Christian relations and privileges, as naturalization 
makes one perfect in citizenship. In doing this, he 
uses baptism and regeneration as synonyms. Either 
word takes in wholly and measures exactly the 
meaning of the other. Evidently, it was a matter of 
indifference which word he used to express the rite ; 
and he used the two interchangeably for variation in 
style. ''Being regenerated^ was Christ at that very 
time perfect?" "As soon as baptized by John he 
became perfect." The use of these two words here, 
as referring to that one and the same act at the Jor- 
dan, cannot be mistaken. 

Here it should be now carefully noted, that for the 
last eighteen years of the life of Irenaeus, he and 
Clement were contemporary. If, therefore, the 
meaning of Irenaeus, in the phrase, "regenerated 
unto God," be at all in the shade of doubt, this most 
bold side light of Clement, his Christian neighbor 
and co-worker, must make it clear, beyond question. 
These quotations from Clement come in to explain, 
as the Madison Papers on phrases in our National 
Constitution. 

TertuUian casts more light on this passage from 
Irenseus, though it is later, and more distant. He 
was born about forty years after the death of Clem- 
ent, and of course would inherit more or less the 
theological phrases of the preceding age. 

In his discussion of baptism he says, — 



IBEN^US : "• REGENERATED UNTO GOD. 251 

*' It is agreed ttiat no one obtains salvation with- 
out baptism, according to the noted saying of our 
Lord : ' Except a man be born of water he cannot be 
saved.' The hiw of baptizing is imposed and the 
form given. ' Go,' said he, ' teach the nations, bap- 
tizing them in the name of the Father, and of the 
Son, and of the Holy Spirit.' To this law it is 
added : ' Except one be born again of water, and of 
the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of 
heaven.' This bound one's faith to the necessity 
of baptism. Therefore, afterward, all believers were 
baptized."^ 

It is not needful to quote further from Tertullian 
to show his use of these synonyms for the baptismal 
rite. 

Origen indulges in the same phraseology for bap- 
tism as Irenaeus and Clement. Commenting on what 
Christ says of offending the little ones, and of their 
angels, he raises the question, when the angelic can 
commence in the life of the little ones : — 

'^ Whether they assume the oversight of them at 
the time of the washing of regeneration, by which 
they are born again, ... or from their birth," &c. 
Again, on the passage : " Ye which have followed 
me in the regeneration," he says, " In the regenera- 

s " Prjescribitur nemini sine bap tismo competere salutem, ex ilia 
maxima pronunciatione Domini, qui ait: nisi natns ex aqua quis 
erit, not habet salutem. Lex enem tinguendi imposita est, et forma 
prsescripta : Ite, inquit, docete nationes, tinguentes eas in nomen 
Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti. Huic legi collata definitio ilia, 
nisi quis renatus f uerit ex aqua et Spiritu, non intrabit in regnum 
ccelorum ; obstrinxit lidem ad baptismi necessitatem. Itaqiie omnes 
exinde credentes tinguebantur. — Tertull., De Baptismo, c. xii. 



252 THE CHURCH AND HER CHILDREN. 

tion by the laver, every one, born again of water and 
of the Spirit, is free from stain." ^ 

Cyprian's use of the words under consideration, 
and of their synonyms, makes it quite pertinent to call 
attention to a few of his expressions. Cyprian vt^as 
born, probably, while Irenaeus was yet alive. 

In his epistle to Donatus, giving an account of his 
own conviction and conversion, he says, — 

*' I thought it a very difficult and hard thing for 
me, with my habits, that which the divine favor 
promised for my salvation, to wit, that any one could 
be born again, and that, animated to a new life by 
the laver of the saving water, one could put aside 
what he had formerly been." ^ 

" But after the washing away of the stain of a for- 
mer life by the aid of the regenerating water, it 
poured light from above on the expiated and pure 
heart." » 

" It seems, also, a foolish thing, since that second 
birth is spiritual by which we are born unto Christ 
through the laver of regeneration," &c.^ 

6 YloTEpov de^aiiEVOL ttjv olKOvofiiav nepi avTOvg dcouceiv d^* ov dia hwrpov 
ira^LvyyevEGtag, b eyevydTjoav . . . rj and yeviaeog. — Kara 6e rov Tiovrpov 
iraTiLyyEveaiav irdg fierd nadapog unb pvnov 6 yevrjOelc uvodev k^ vdarog koI 
ILvevfiaTog. — Comm. in Matt, xviii. 10, xix. 28. 

■^ Difficile prorsus, ac durum pro illis tunc moribus opinabar, quod 
in salutem mibi divina indulgentia polKcebatur, ut quis renasci 
deniio possit; utque in novam vitam lavacro aqufe salutaris anima- 
tus, quod prius fuerat, exponeret. — Epis. 1, ad. Don. § 3. [In the 
Oxford edition tMs Epistle is put among the Treatises of Cyprian.] 

8 Sed postquam undse genitalis auxilio superioris [evi labe detersa, 
in expiatum pectus ac purum, desuper lumen infudit. — Do. § 4. 

9 lUud quoque ineptum, ut cum nativitas secunda spmtualis sit, 
qua in Christo per lavacrum regenerationis nascimur, etc. — Ep. 
Ixxiii. § 5. Ox. ed. bcxiv. 



lEENJEUS : " REGENERATED UNTO GOD." 253 

*' But if regeneration is in the laver, that is, in bap- 
tism," &C.10 

'' For the second birth, which is in baptism, begets 
sons of God, &c.^^ 

'' As in the laver of the saving water the fire of 
Gehenna is extinguished, so by alms and good works 
the flame of sin is quenched. And because once, in 
baptism, the remission of sins is granted," &c.^ 

Many more passages, probably a score, could be 
cited from Cyprian, to show that he used phrases 
similar to the one under examination from Irenseus 
to express baptism. Yet why increase the citation 
of witnesses ? All the sons of Jacob were not sum- 
moned to prove the identity of Joseph. Let the 
case, therefore, be brought to a close. 

It does riot seem needful to surround this phrase 
of Irenseus, renascuntur in Deum infantes et parvulos^ 
etc., with a wider context for interpretation. It 
plainly appears to have been the usage of the times 
to express baptism, baptizing, and the baptized, by 
the terms regeneration, regenerating, born again, 
born of water, &c. 

We are the slower to take, the ancient meaning 
and spirit of such phraseology, because we now 
commonly connect the saving and divine work of the 



10 Si autem in lavacro, id est, in baptismo, est regeneratio, etc. — 
Do. § 6. 

11 Secnnda enim nativitas, quie est in baptismo, filios Dei generat, 
etc. — Ep. Ixxiv. § 14. Ox. ed. Ixxv. 

12 Sicut lavacro aquae salutaris Gebennse ignis extinguitnr, ita 
eleemosynis atque operibus justis delictonim flamma sopitiir. Et 
quia semel, in baptismo, remissio peccatornm datur, etc. — Cyp. De 
Opere et Eleemos. § 2. 

22 



254 THE CHURCH AND HER CHnJ)REN. 

Holy Spirit with regeneration. It means with us 
that radical moral change and creative act of God by 
which one becomes a new creature in Christ Jesus, 
But it is in comparatively modern times that the 
word has come to have that meaning in theological 
terminology. Anciently it was not so. 

There is another theory of interpretation for the 
passage. It is said that Irenaeus teaches in his works, 
that as Adam brought death to the human race, Christ 
brings life, and in that sense he is the regenerator of 
the race. All which is true, and many passages culled 
from his writings show this.^^ But, so far as appears, 
Irenaeus does not elsewhere use the language in ques- 
tion to express the redeeming work of Christ. 

This phrase, however, is a common expression 
with him for the baptismal ceremony, if not in 
identical, yet similar words, and of the same import. 
When introducing the commission of our Lord, '' Go, 
teach all nations, baptizing them," &c., he says, 
" And again, giving the authority for regeneration 
unto God to his disciples, he said," &c.^^ 

This '' authority for regeneration unto God " can be 
nothing else than the commission for baptizing. For 
to say that this commission implied authority to work 
any spiritual regeneration, is simply saying that a 
divine energy was then given to the apostles to create 
men anew in Christ Jesus. 

Speaking of the blind man to whom Jesus restored 



13 Bib. Sacra, vi. 346-56. 

14 Et iterum, potestatem regenerationis in Deum demandans dia- 
cipulis, dicebat eis, etc. 

Adv. H.Ter. Lib. iii. c. 19. 



IREN^US : " REGENERATED UNTO GOD. 255 

sight by the anointing and the washing in Siloam, 
Irenseus calls the washing figuratively, " the washing 
of regeneration," — lavacrum regenerationis, — and 
"that regeneration which is by the laver" — Earn 
quae per lavacrum est regenerationem.^^ 

While treating of the errors of the Yalentinians, 
who greatly corrupted baptism, he says, that they 
worked " for the rejection of the baptism of regenera- 
tion unto God, and for the destruction of the whole 
faith." 16 

We have now come up, by a many-sided approach, 
to that doubtful phrase of Irenseus, renascuntur in 
Deum^ infantes^ etc. We have surrounded the pas- 
sage by a wide context of other authors, living at and 
near the same time with him. They are the most com- 
petent interpreters, writing in the style of the age, 
and using its terminology. They leave us in no 
doubt whether, in those times, the words baptism and 
regeneration, were synonyms. They use them as 
such. 

More than these interpreters, Irenseus is his own. 
The baptism which Christ empowered the apostles to 
bestow, he calls a "regeneration." The washing of 
the blind man in Siloam, he calls " regeneration by 
the laver." The Valentinian corruptions of this 
sacrament, he says, amount to the rejection of the 
" baptism of regeneration." Neander tersely says of 
this passage, " Regeneration and baptism are in 
Irenaeus intimately connected; and it is difficult to 

15 Bo. Lib. v., c. 15. 

16 E/^ e^dpvTjatv tov PaiiTiafMaTog rrjg dg Qeov avayevvrjaeug kql naarjg 
TTJc mcTecjg ainb-deatv. — Do, Lib. i., c. 18. 



256 THE CHUKCH AND HER CHILDEEN. 

conceive how the term ' regeneration ' can be em- 
ployed in reference to this age [of infants] to denote 
anything else than baptism." ^'' 

So near to the times of the apostles do we find this 
record of infant baptism. We can make nothing of 
the phrase, less or more than this. And this by a 
writer who was born within fifteen years, probably, 
of a living apostle. That leaves but a short space till 
we come to the baptism of the '' household " of Lydia, 
and of Stephanas, and of the jailer. 

17 ch. His. i. 311. 



CHAPTER XXXII, 



HISTORIC SILENCE. 



HERE we are met by an objection. If conceded 
that Irenaeus refers to infant baptism in the passage 
just examined, and if conceded, as it is, that this is 
the earliest direct reference by Christian authors to 
this ordinance, there remains a period of about one 
hundred years between the death of the last apostle 
and the death of Irenseus, during which the writings 
of the fathers make no allusion to this institution. 
Those not accepting the ordinance call this an ominous 
historic silence, and they assume the position as one 
of great apparent strength. It is a wise assumption, 
for this is the last stand-point for them. 

The objection made is, that, for one hundred years 
immediately following the apostolic age, the Chris- 
tian writings furnish no allusion to the ordinance in 
question. We have given to the objection extra force 
by allowing a century to the period. It is probably 
much less ; for Irenseus was born about A.D. 114, and 
suffered martyrdom, as is supposed, A.D. 202. His 
principal work as an author, against the Gnostics or 
Heresies, in which the passage in question occurs, 
was written during the reign of Commodus, who 

22* 257 



258 THE CHURCH AND HER CHILDREK. 

came to the throne A.D. 180. The ominous silence, 
then, may be only about eighty years. 

The objection has some substance and much sem- 
blance, and we will consider it in particulars. 

1. The rank or relative importance in which the 
New Testament left baptism should be regarded. 
The Lord Jesus himself never baptized. ^ Thus by 
his practice he gave fundamental truth an immense 
prominence above a ceremony. Saving faith, holy 
love, and consecration, the Christian life, — these were 
the main thinsrs witli him. So the fruit were srood 
and the tree vigorous, he did not personally attach a 
label. St. Paul had instruction into this very spirit 
and practice, to keep rites in the back-ground. 
" Christ sent me not to baptize, but to preach the 
gospel." Hence the great apostle was no ritualist. 
He had. seen and practised enough of the externals 
in Judaism. He gave his attention, as a Christian 
minister and scholar and writer, to doctrines and 
hearts and fruits. How he opens on the petty 
sects and strifes in the Corinthian church ! He 
could not bear to see the great essentials of the 
Christian faith and life obscured, and crowded from 
their centre, by the merely nominal. 

" I thank God that I baptized none of you but 
Crispus and Gains, and the household of Stephanas. 
Besides these, I know not whether I baptized any 
other. For Christ sent me not to ritualize, but to 
evangelize." 2 

Not that the apostle would undervalue a title, but 

1 John iv, 2. 2 i Cor. i. 14-17. 



HISTOEIC SILENCE. 259 

would keep in its legitimate pre-eminence the sub- 
stance to be entitled. Doubtless the stamp, or trade- 
mark, of the manufacturer is a good thing, attached to 
a finished and worthy article ; but how immensely 
more important to make that article ! 

Under St. Paul's thanksgiving to God, that he had 
not baptized many, but left it, among minor things, to 
helpers and deacons, we would not expect the apos- 
tolic fathers to press this rite to the front in their 
preaching and writing. It was left for an age farther 
from the apostolic to make ceremonials outrank essen- 
tials, and push a ritual into an operative, and a label 
above the fruit on the tree. 

2. Care must be taken, lest the objection of silence, 
belonging to the second century, borrow a strength 
from the nineteenth century. For it is hard for us, 
burdened by the prolific press of to-day, to judge in 
equity of the silence of history and the poverty of 
general literature, in an age thirteen hundred years 
before the invention of printing, and when new 
volumes on the Christian religion were so wide 
apart. 

During the year 1873, one, to have kept up with 
the English press, American and foreign, in its 
copyright issues of volumes and pamphlets, must 
have read fifteen works a day. If he would have 
followed closely the press in the entire repub- 
lic of letters, he must have read eighty works a 
day. 

And, besides all this, there is the daily and weekly, 
the quarterly and occasional miscellany, the thick- 
strewn falling leaves of every hour from the tree 



260 THE CHURCH AND HER CHILDREl^. 

of knowledge, that never aspire to the dignity of 
literary property in a copyright. 

With the literary birth and culture and burden we 
have in this age, we take up a literarj^ question of the 
second century, and unconsciously attempt to run into 
a bookstore at Rome or Athens, Corinth or Alexandria, 
to read up on the topic. Doubtless, men there would 
then have talked with us on the subject ; but there 
would not have been interviewers, stenographers, 
reporters, and printing-presses, to transmit our discus- 
sions to the nineteenth century. Athens then did 
not publish "The Pan Optikon Daily," nor Rome 
"- The Weekly Orbis Terrarum ; " nor did Gamaliel 
then edit a " Bibliotheca Sacra " at Jerusalem, or 
Quintus, an " Ecclesiastical Quarterly" at Alexandria. 
No steamers then vexed the Ostia, the Piraeus, the 
Bosporus, and the mouths of the Nile, with their 
burden of mail-bags. Locomotives were not then 
playing along both slopes of the Apennines and 
Alps ; nor did telegraphic wires then click in the 
Parthenon, and stretch from the Acropolis to lands 
indefinitely beyond the Indian borders of Alexander. 
Ideas then travelled on foot, and Hoe's printing-press 
was preceded by only the inkhorn and parchment. 
With such means at their command for publishing, 
what literary remains could Ave expect from the 
Christian writers of that day ? 

3. The Christian scholars and authors in the second 
century were very few. What St. Paul said to the 
Corinthians, about the year sixty of our Lord, could 
have lost but little of its aptness about the year one 
hundred and sixty. " Ye see youi' calling, brethren, 



HISTORIC SILENCE. 261 

how that not many wise men after the flesh, not 
many mightj% not many noble, are called : but God 
hath chosen the foolish things of the world to con- 
found the wise ; and God hath chosen the weak 
things of the world to confound the things which 
are mighty ; and base things of the world, and things 
which are despised, hath God chosen."^ 

This is not a very hopeful beginning for Christian 
authorship in the second century, and for full alcoves 
in our Library of the Fathers. The historic fact, 
therefore, as given by Mosheim, as to the number 
and grade of the Christian writers of the first and 
second centuries, must not surprise us, while it must 
limit our expectations from the authors of those times. 
In the age of the apostolic fathers he says, — 
" It was not deemed so essentially requisite in a 
teacher that he should be distinguished for profound 
or extensive knowledge, either human or divine, as 
that he should be a man of virtue and probity, and, 
in addition to a due measure of gravity, be possessed 
of a certain degree of facility in imparting instruction 
to the ignorant. Had the apostles, indeed, thought 
otherwise, and directed that none but men of letters 
and erudition should have been elected to the office 
of presbyters, it would not have been possible for 
the churches to have complied with such a mandate ; 
since, at that time, the number of wise and learned 
who had embraced the faith of Christ was but small, 
and, as it were, of no account. The Christian writers 
of the first century, consequently, were not many ; 
and from the labors of the few, whose works have 

3 1 Cor. i. 26-28. 



262 THE CHUBCH AND HER CHILDEEN. 

reached us, whether we consult such as have been 
handed down whole and entire, or such as carry with 
them the marks of interpolation and corruption, it is 
uniformly evident, that, in unfolding the sacred truths 
of Christianit}^ to the world, the assistance of genius, 
of art, or of human means of any other kind, was but 
little, if at all, courted."^ 

It must not surprise us, therefore, in looking back 
through the eighty years or so between Irenseus, our 
last authority for infant baptism, and St. John, to find 
the number of authors very few,*who wrote any thing 
for Christianity. 

4. The reflection is a sad one, consequently, that 
any of those few writings should have been lost to 
the world. And the regret becomes the deeper, if 
the death of the witness and the loss of his affidavit 
be so used as to work against the claim to the fuhiess 
of the Christian system. The conceded loss of a col- 
lection of papers pertinent to the general issue, and 
the possible loss among them of one paper pertinent 
and important to the particular issue, should at least 
mitigate an adverse judgment. In the confessed loss 
of miscellaneous historic evidences, equity and candor 
w^ould draw a wide margin for the unknown, that 
should be, at the least, neutral ground. In the court 
of moral equity, denial would not be allowed to exceed 
affirmation, as to the value of the loss. 

It is with pain that the Christian scholar reads those 
references in Eusebius, to books of our earliest Chris- 
tian authors, now evidently lost. It Avas about A.D. 
130, that Quadratus, bishop of Athens, presented 

* Moslieim's Com. vol i, 200, Murdock's ed. 



HISTOKIC SILENCE. 263 

to Hadrian a written apology, or defence, of Chris- 
tianity ; but it has perished.^ One of the philosophers 
at Athens, Aristides, embraced Christianity, and wrote 
a defence of it ; and his work was extant in the seven- 
teenth ccDtury, but is now lost.^ Melito of Lydia 
wrote eighteen treatises on Christian topics ; the loss 
of which we mourn the more, as one of them was 
on baptism.^ Miltiades flourished as a writer while 
Irenseus was combating heresy, and published an 
Apology, now lost, with five other w^orks.^ Apol- 
linaris, bishop of Hierapolis, in Phrygia, about A.D. 
170, made valuable contribution to the Christian 
volumes now lost.^ The same may be said of Hege- 
sippus of Asia Minor, who, about A.D. 150, wrote 
five books of ecclesiastical memoirs.^^ 

Nor should we know of these losses but for the 
incideutal allusion to the books by Eusebius and 
others. How many of the few written perished 
without any recognition, and were left without 
monument, epitaph, or mound even, in "- the waste 
howling wilderness " of paganism, through which 
Christianity came up to its promised land, will never 
be known. And when pressed denominationally by 
this ominous historic silence, and oppressed by it, as 
all ecclesiastical scholarship is, there is reKef in think- 
ing what might have been. For it is only technical 
justice that gains by the death of witnesses. 

What might have been is painfully illustrated by 
the pagan persecution of Diocletian. This began 

5 Euseb. iv. 3. 6 Do. iv. 3. 7 Do. iv. 26. 

8 Do. V. 17. 9 Do. iv. 27. ^^ Do. iv. 8, 22. 



264 THE CHUECH AND HER CHH^DEEN. 

A.D. 303. The edict of the emperor called for the 
destruction of all the Christian edifices. Every stone 
structure was to be pulled down, and every wooden 
one burned. It called also for the destruction of all 
the sacred books of the Christians ; and the penalty 
of death hung over the magistrate who should be 
negligent, or the Christian who should be recusant 
of the edict. All parchments, papers, letters, and 
documents of any kind, kept in the churches, or in 
the houses of the bishops, were called forth, and given 
indiscriminately to the flames.^^ 

And so, across the Roman empire, these vandal fires 
went, robbing the libraries of all coming time. " And 
hence," says Mosheim, '' the history of Christianity 
suffered an immense loss in this Diocletian persecu- 
tion. For all that had come down from the earlier 
ages of the Church, — the documents, the papers, the 
epistles, the laws, the acts of the martyrs and of 
councils, from which the early historj^ of the Chris- 
tian community might be happily illustrated, — all, or 
at least very much of them, perished in these com- 
motions." ^^ 

How many years of vain study and unclosed argu- 



11 So Bassus, governor of Adrianople, says to Philip, the bishop : 
Legem Iini)eratoris andistis. . . . Vasa, ergo, qiifecunque vobiscuin 
sunt aurea, vel argentea ; scripturas etiam, per quas vel legitls, vel 
docetis. obtutibus nostrse potestatis ingerite. The bishop, standing 
at the door of tlie cliurcli, witli his assistants, complied in i^art, say- 
ing : Vasa, quae postulas, mox accipe. Ista contemnimns. Non pre- 
tioso metallo Deiim colimus, sed timore. The sacred books he ^Yould 
not give ui^. These Bassus violently snatched from their place, and 
burned in the forum. — Mosheoi, ut infra. 

1^ Mosheim's Com., ii. 422, et seq., Murdock's ed. 



HISTORIC SILENCE. 265 

ment, and what sorrow in the world of letters, those 
fires of Diocletian inflicted ! 

After such devastation of Christian writings in the 
years 303 and following, we would not expect to find 
much remaining of the sacred authorship of the first 
and second centuries, specially if we remember that 
any little remnant, to reach our day, had yet to run 
the gauntlet of the ages, between pagans and Jews, 
infidels and Mohammedans.^^ 

Well does Milton speak of this practice. After 
charging the Church and the Commonwealth "' to 
have a vigilant eye how books demean themselves," 
he says, " Yet, on the other hand, as good almost kill 
a man as kill a good book. Who kills a man, kills a 
reasonable creature, God's image ; but he who destroys 
a good book kills reason itself, — kills the image of God, 
as it were in the eye. Many a man lives a burden to 
the earth ; but a good book is the precious life-blood 
of a master spirit, embalmed and treasured up on pur- 
pose to a life beyond life. It is true, no age can restore 
a life, whereof perhaps there is no great loss ; and revo- 
lt This burning of unpopular books was a common resort, where 
brute force instead of argument prevailed, and where one found it 
easier to carry the oj)inions of his opponent to the stake, than his 
own convictions into the heart of that opponent. Thus, those early 
converts at Ephesus, under the preaching of St. Paul, brought together 
their books on magic, and burned them to the value of seven or eight 
thousand dollars. 

Some twenty-five years later, under Domitian, this act of theEphe- 
sian Christians was imitated by the Eomans, in burning the works of 
unpopular authors. Nequeinipsos modo auctores, sed in libros quo- 
que eorum saevitum, delegato triumviris ministerio, ut mouumenra 
clarissimorum ingeniorum in comitio ac foro urerentur. Scilicet, 
illo igne vocem populi Eomani, et libertatem senatus, et con- 
scientiam generis humani aboleri, arbitrabantur. — TacitiAgric, §iL 
23 



266 THE CHUKCH AND HER CHILDREN. 

lutions of ages do not oft recover the loss of a rejected 
truth, for the want of which w^hole nations fare the 
worse." ^^ 

5. The small number of Christian treatises, prior 
to those of Irenseus, that remain to ns. Ecclesiastic 
cal history is able to cite but eleven authors, whose 
writings are known to be extant, between St. John 
and Irenaeus. And many of their treatises tire ex- 
ceedingly fragmentary, as showing a perilous escape 
through the ages. The larger number of the works, 
of even these eleven, have perished. The entire 
amount saved out of the Christian writings of the 
about one hundred years, covered by our review in 
this chapter, would make probably less than five 
hundred pages in Torrey's Neander. The English 
press of to-day is issuing that amount, under copy- 
right, every three hours. ^^ 

6. Consider the topics that would naturally and 
necessarily come up for discussion, between the writ- 
ing of the New Testament, where household baptism 
is mentioned, and the allusion to it by Irenseus, a 



14 Of UnlicenvSed Printing. 

15 The eleven accredited authors of the period under review are 
as follows : Cleiuens Romanus and his First Epistle ; unknown 
author of The Epistle to Diognetus ; Ignatius and seven genuine 
epistles to the Ephesians, Magnesians, Trallians, Romans, Phila- 
delphians, Smyrn^eans, and to Polycarp ; Pastor of Hernias ; Bar- 
nabas ; Papias ; Polycarp ; Justm Martyr (not including the sus- 
pected Discourse to the Greeks, Hortatory Address to the Greeks, 
and On the Sole Government of God) ; Tatian ; Athenagoras ; 
Theophilus. 

In discriminating between the authentic and the doubtful, we 
have followed, mainly, the editors of The Ante-Nicene Christian 
Library. 



HISTORIC SILENCE. 267 

little more than a century. What chance has infant 
baptism, even if in common practice, to gain the 
allusion of a single line ? 

Christianity had, naturally, a prominent struggle 
witli paganism ; and about one-fourth of all the writ- 
ing mentioned as extant is devoted to this issue, to 
wit : The Epistle to Diognetus ; the Plea for the 
Christians, and a Treatise on the Resurrection, by 
Athenagoras, the most scholarly and classic of all 
the Apologists; Tatian's Address to the Greeks; 
and the three Books of Theophjdus to Autolycus. 

In such discussions, one would not expect to find 
references to the sacraments, and holy days, and 
services of the Church. An argument of that na- 
ture, and with pagans, would not be likely to come 
down to routine. Hence, the fact that this one- 
fourth of all the Christian writings extant of that 
period makes no reference to the sabbath, to public 
Avorship, to the sacrament of the supper or of bap- 
tism. 

The silence concerning baptism is, therefore, equally 
ominous concerning these other three marked features 
in the Church. This brief silence of history, the bare 
absence of testimony for the time being, must not carry 
the ecclesiastical jury; else we may lose out of the 
Church her sabbath, and public worship, and solemn 
memorial of our Lord's passion. An argument from 
the unknown has this liability of bringing one to un- 
expected and unwelcome conclusions. If there must 
be an argument over this silent section of history, 
one-fourth of the whole for the period in question, it 
must be by the logic of assumptions. Would it not 



268 THE CHUBCH AND HEK CHILDREN. 

be better to assume a position that will allow to us 
the baptism of children, than a position that will take 
from us the baptism of adults, the Lord's Day and 
congregational worship, and the communion of 
saints ? 

We have the brief epistle of Polycarp to the 
Philippians ; but in it he makes no reference to the 
sabbatli, baptism, the supper, or public worship. The 
same is true of the fragments that we have of the 
writings of Papias, one of the hearers of St. John. 
The first epistle of Clemens Romanus, the only well 
accepted one, has the same silence. Here are seven 
of the eleven Christian authors who wrote prior to 
the date of the celebrated passage from Irenaeas ; and 
they are all silent concerning the Christian sabbath, 
acts of public worship in the Church, baptism, and the 
sacrament of the supper. Whj^, then, should their 
silence on infant baptism be regarded as so significant 
and adverse ? 

Ignatius, who died not later than A.D. 116, makes 
one reference to public worship, two to the sab- 
bath, five to the sacred supper, and four to bap- 
tism. 

The pastor of Hernias, who flourished about A.D. 
130, makes no allusion to the sabbath, or to public 
worship, or to the eucharist, and has two to baptism. 
In the epistle of Barnabas there is one reference. 
Justin Martyr, who was contemporary for a time 
with Irenseus, and who died A.D. 165, has no 
allusion to public worship, but one to the Lord's Day, 
three to the sacrament of the supper, and four to 
baptism. 



HISTOKIC SILENCE. 269 

But let us make a further analysis. Of the eleven 
authors for the period, four only make reference to 
baptism of any kind. Their total references are eleven. 
Two of these are merely historical, as to John's bap- 
tism, and to Paul's " one faith and one baptism." Of 
the other nine references, only four are obvious and 
clear as cases of only adult baptism. The remaining 
five can be made cases of adult baptism only by bald 
declaration ; and infant baptism can be excluded from 
them only by assumption. To declare and assume 
concerning them, is simply begging the question 
under investigation. We proceed to give the full 
text of these cases, using the translation of the 
Ante-Mcene Christian Library. 

" Let us further inquire whether the Lord took any 
care to foreshadow the water [of baptism] and the 
cross. Concerning the water, indeed, it is written, 
in reference to the Israelites, that they should not 
receive that baptism which leads to the remission of 
sins, but should procure another for themselves." ^^ 

John's household baptism, and the commensurate 
relations of baptism and circumcision, will not allow 
us to restrict this passage to adults by a bald declara- 
tion. 

'^ It is not lawful without the bishop either to bap- 
tize or to celebrate a love-feast ; but whatsoever he 
shall approve of, that is also pleasing to God. So 
that every thing that is done may ba secure and 
valid." 17 



16 Epistle of Barnabas, Ante-Mc. lib. i., 120. 

1'^ Ep. of Ignatius to tbe Smyrnseans. Do. p. 249. 
23* 



270 THE chukch: and her cHn^DEE^r. 

This passage would properly cover an infant or 
an adult, and cannot be monopolized by a theory. 
" Please ye Him under whom ye fight, and from 
whom je receive your wages. Let none of yon be 
found a deserter. Let your baptism endure as your 
arms ; your faith as your helmet ; your love as your 
spear ; your patience as a complete panoply." ^^ 

The pertinence and power of this charge are the 
same, be the date and age of one's baptism what 
they may. The charge comports with infant as well 
as with adult baptism ; and no fair exegesis can divorce 
it from the household, as of Stephanas, or of Lydia, 
or of the jailer. Assume, for a moment, the usage of 
infant baptism, and it will be seen that Ignatius is 
speaking aptly and practically. 

In the quotation following, it will be noticed that a 
Gentile is add^'essing a Jew. 

" Let us glorify God, all nations gathered together ; 
for he has also visited us. Let us glorify him by the 
King of glory, by the Lord of hosts. For he has been 
gracious towards the Gentiles also ; and our sacrifices 
he esteems more grateful than yours. What need, 
then, have I of circumcision, who have been witnessed 
to by God? What need have I of that other 
baptism, who have been baptized with the Holy 
Ghost." 

'' And we, who have approached God through Him 
[Christ], have received not carnal, but spiritual cir- 
cumcision, which Enoch and those like him observed. 
And we have received it through baptism, since we 

18 Ep. of Ignatius to Polycarp. Do. p. 264. 



EnSTORIC SILENCE. 271 

were sinners, by God's mercy ; and all men may 
equally obtain it." ^^ 

Let it be here noted that the discussion is between 
a Jew and a Gentile. The Jew naturally and inexo- 
rably insists on the national and characteristic ceremo- 
nial of his people, when a Gentile comes in among 
the children, and into the Church, of Abraham. That 
ceremonial is circumcision, and Justin calls it also 
"that other baptism." 

These representative men of two nationalities, and 
of two religious theories, cannot discuss the relative 
merits of circumcision and of baptism, without involv- 
ing the relations of the children of believers to the 
Church. 

All the proper candidates for circumcision, in the 
theory of the Jew, necessarily come into view with 
him in the discussion. The Jew cannot exclude from 
his mind the children of the proselyted or Christian- 
ized Gentile. And the reply of Justin may be pre- 
sumed to meet this point in the mind of the Jew, and 
so meet the demand of his theory. The Jew says, 
'' The Gentile, coming into church relations, must be 
circumcised." The Gentile replies, " What need 
have I of circumcision, who have been baptized ? " 
The moment we place ourselves as listeners to their 
discussion, the question about children arises in our 
minds. It cannot be excluded. 

We do not affirm that infant baptism is taught, or 
necessarily implied, in these passages from Barnabas, 

19 Justin Martyr. Dialogue with Tryplio the Jew. Do. ii., 122 
and 140. 



272 THE CHURCH AND HER CHH.DREN'. 

Ignatius, and Justin Martyr. We wish only to show 
the possibility of its being there, and that the prob- 
abilities are strongly in favor of the inference that it 
is there. The considerations advanced must at least 
rescue the quotations from a monopoly to a neutrality, 
and save the words of Justin from the assumption 
and assertion that they teach only adult baptism. 

If this historic silence of a century or less is ad- 
duced in testimony, it is but fitting that the evidence 
be analyzed. If silence is brought upon the stand, 
and compelled to speak, we claim the right to cross- 
question. With some gratitude for the occasion 
given us, and with no anxiety about the verdict, we 
here dismiss this branch of the case. 



CHAPTER XXXIII. 

HISTORIC SILENCE OF THE JEWS. 

THERE is another kind of historic silence quite as 
ominous as tliat which we have been analyzing. The 
tender and passionate interest of the Jews in all that 
pertained to the national, ecclesiastical, and religious 
privileges of their children, is proverbial. The very 
ancient promises, covenants, and prophecies of God 
were marked by intentions and phrases pertinent to 
posterity and the rights of childhood. It is '-' his 
household," ''his seed," "his children after him," 
" thee and thy seed." Whatever blanks were left to 
be filled up variously, these phrases covering child- 
hood interests were alwaj^s imprinted in the divine 
document. All of the organic arrangements and 
covenant stipulations of God with his ancient people 
had a specific recognition of the children of believers. 
No point was more fundamental or vital in those 
early instruments of the theocracy. The dying echoes 
of the Old Testament system, and the opening proph- 
ecies of the New, are in the letter and spirit of this 
same point. '' Behold, I will send you Elijah the 
prophet, and he shall turn the heart of the fathers to 
the children, and the heart of the children to their 
fathers." 

273 



274 THE CHURCH AND HEE, CHILDREN. 

In answer to this final promise, in the last two 
verses of the Old Testament, there came Elijah, John 
the Baptist " preaching in the wilderness of Judaea ; 
and there went out to him Jerusalem, and all Judsea, 
and all the region round about Jordan, and were 
baptized of him in Jordan." '' Nor do I believe 
this People," sajs Lightfoot, '' that flocked to 
John's baptism, were so forgetful of the manner and 
custom of the nation, that they brought not their 
little children also with them to be baptized." '' We 
suppose that men, women, and children came to John's 
baptism, according to the manner of the nation in 
the reception of proselytes." 

It is well known that Judaism opposed the inaugu- 
ration and development of the Christian dispensation 
at every possible point. The crucifixion of the Head 
w^as followed up by most persistent endeavors to 
destroy the body of believers ; and the New Testa- 
ment is marked by these Jewish attacks, and the 
Christian defences. Manj^ of the Jews, who became 
devout Christians, still retained their national Juda- 
izing tendencies ; and only by council and epistle, 
and rebuke and forbearance, and the slow working of 
time, were they overcome. 

Allow, now, for a moment, the omission of circum- 
cision, and the non-admission of infant baptism, and 
it will be seen that the religious status of the child 
of the believer is greatly and even radically changed. 
To the Jew and to the Judaizing Christian this change 
in the relation of his child would be full of anguish 
and anxieties. All the covenant rights and expecta- 
tions of a child in a family of God would be pain- 
fully endangered in the estimation of the parent. 



HISTORIC SILENCE OF THE JEWS. 275 

The childhood promises would be to him as a docu- 
ment unacknowledged and unsealed. There would 
be no covenanting, official, and organic connection of 
the child with the re-formed Church ; and the contrast 
of the new with the old dispensation would in this 
respect be marked and alarming and provocative. 
How could the Jew overlook, or fail to attack, the 
new form of the Church in this weak place ? How 
could the full Christian, yet semi- Jew, restrain him- 
self at this ignoring of the children ? 

Studious for reasons to oppose Christianity, and 
under both Old Testament and traditional influences 
to guard the rights and interests of their '' seed after 
them," they yet make here no point. The New 
Testament shows no controversy with a Jew over the 
status of the child in the reconstructed Church. No 
Jewish writing extant contains such a reference, 
Justin's Dialogue with Trypho the Jew is a system- 
atic, elaborate, and extended argument to remove 
Jewish objections to Christianity, and commend the 
system to a hearty acceptance, as God's one and 
ancient plan of salvation. Yet, in the entire volume, 
there is no allusion to any objection or difficulty of 
this kind on the part of the Jews. 

If there had been this organic change in the struc- 
ture of the Church, and in the new form of it the 
child so left out of notice and care, could there have 
been a complete and unrecorded acquiescence ? Is 
not this historic silence ominous of a fact, and 
strongly presumptive, that there was no Jewish op- 
position to record, because there was no such organic 
change in the structure of the Church that left the 
child out ? 



CHAPTER XXXIV. 

SIJMMAEY OF THE HISTORICAL AEGUMENT. 

OUR historical disquisition is completed; and it may 
serve the common interest that truth has in this dis- 
cussion to state the result of it in a few condensed 
sentences. 

1. We opened this inquiry A.D. 412, because in- 
fant baptism is found to be the then universal usage 
in the Church. This was the initial year of the Pela- 
gian controversy under the lead of Augustine, who 
declares the rite to have been received from the 
apostles. 

2. In this controversy, infant baptism, as a rite, was 
incidentally forced into doctrinal relations to the very 
head of the question in dispute. Consequently, re- 
ferences to the rite by both disputants are full to an 
overflow. An American author on our questions of 
tariff and free trade, since the admission of Missouri 
to the Union in 1820, would not probably make more 
frequent allusions to slavery, as an existing and in- 
fluential fact. 

3. When not involved in dispute, we have seen 
that even voluminous writers among the early fathers 
have made only rare references to this ordinance. In 
his works preceding and following the Pelagian con- 

276 



SUMMARY OF THE HISTORICAL ARGUMENT. 277 

troversy, Augustine himself but seldom brings the 
point before his reader. Vincent, Theodoret, Isidore, 
and Jerome, of the age following Augustine, wrote 
extensively, and under the full practice of this cere- 
mony ; yet their allusions to it are only incidental and 
isolated. Tlie reason is obvious. The practice being 
universal, and unquestioned in its authority, their 
pens could do better service on other themes. This 
fact becomes very important w^hen the objection arises 
that there is no clear reference to infant baptism in 
the century immediately following the apostles. 

4. We notice, that whenever an occasion calls for 
it, the references to infant baptism are suflScient. 
Those early authors, like the modern newspaper, dis- 
cussed current questions. But for the Pelagian con- 
troversy, many chapters never would have been 
written on this rite in the fifth century, while, prior 
to that, the allusions of authors to it were only in- 
frequent, as thej^ were to the inspiration of the Scrip- 
tures, the sabbath, or the sacrament of the supper. 
For example, in A.D. 253, Fidus, an African pastor, 
comes before a council of bishops with a question of 
conscience, whether the infant may be baptized before 
it is eight days old. He thinks it may not ; but his 
opinion receives a unanimous negative, the nemo eon- 
sensit^ of his sixty-five associates. 

Here is an accidental revelation of an indefinite 
amount of historical fact on this matter. The simple 
question was a draft at sight, and promptly honored. 
Any historian would see, by this incident, that the 
usage was then universal, and that the Church at that 
time would have honored his drafts to any amount for 

24 



278 THE CHURCH AND HER CHILDREN. 

facts and opinions in favor of Infant Baptism, as an 
accepted and practised sacrament. And the presump- 
tion is a fair one, that, if Fidus had put his question a 
centur}' earlier, Cyprian's answer could have been writ- 
ten as many years sooner. Thus it is that accidents and 
incidents and side issues have given us fragments or 
specimens of what was apparently universal. If the 
body but show blood at any touch of the lancet, that 
is evidence enough that it carries it. It need not 
bleed alway and at every pore for proof. 

5. Tlie lack of historical reference here and there, 
and frequently to this ordinance in extant authors, is 
on the two common principles, — that daily occur- 
rences fail of notice, and that unneeded is uncalled 
evidence. The routine of life, whether domestic, civil, 
or religious, does not ordinarily go into record, espe- 
ciall}' if the writers be few and the records brief, as 
in those early ages. It is rather the important, the 
irregular, and the extraordinary, the exciting interest 
of the time, that makes a passage in history. 

6. In the first and simpler ages of Christianity, 
doctrine and life had pre-eminence over rites and 
ceremonies. An ordinance was not as much as a 
truth to those godly minds. It Avas left for the 
middle and later asres of formalists and sects to culti- 
vate the mint, anise, and cummin of an overgrown 
ecclesiasticism, and express their sickly life ii; ritual 
phylacteries. After English swords and spears have 
plucked Magna Charta from King John at Runny- 
mede, whv should Enolishman or American fre- 
quently recur to the fundamental ordinances in that 
document ? Its few grand and vast principles have 



SUMxMARY OF THE HISTORICAL ARGUMENT. 279 

gone organic into national life. It is enough to as- 
sume without naming them, in the foregone con- 
clusions and fore-ordinations of seven centuries, and 
attend to the great duty of using them in the na- 
tional developments of our own dsij. 

The heirs to a simple Church organization two thou- 
sand years old, with a modified sacrament in it, having, 
as was supposed, an apostolic approval, and with the 
great work on them of giving the doctrine and life of 
the Church to the world, why should they use many 
words on this common, simple, antique ceremonial? 

7. The apostolical authority for infant baptism is not 
denied by those most deeply interested to deny it. 
Pelagius, Coelestius, and others deny the doctrine of 
original sin. Yet, as one proof of it, the universal 
practice of infant baptism to wash it away is cited 
and urged. The Pelagians felt the force of no other 
argument as much. Augustine pressed it with an 
intense energy. The standing of Pelagius in the 
Church, and his reputation for the ages, were in 
peril. While yet alive, he and his heres}^ so called, 
were arraigned before seven councils, and seven- 
teen others discussed it afterward. And the prac- 
tice of infant baptism in the universal Church was 
still urged as proof that Pelagius denied a universal 
tenet of the Church. Scholar as he was, and a trav- 
eller, familiar with religious life in Egj^pt and Pales- 
tine, as well as southern Europe, if a denial of the 
apostolic authority of this rite could have been made, 
he must have had the knowledo^e to do it. Cer- 
tainly he had an intense interest to do it, were the 
denial historically possible. Yet he frankly admits 



280 THE CHURCH AND HER CHILDREN. 

that '' he never had heard even any impious heretic 
or sectary deny it." And no one associated with 
him in this protracted struggle, and so overborne by 
the argument from this ordinance, ever intimated that 
it was a human innovation, and therefore of no author- 
ity. 

8. We find historical evidences of Infant Baptism 
within about eighty years of apostolic times. The 
historical exegesis of the celebrated expression of 
Irenseus would seem to warrant this declaration. 
The usus loquendi of the several authors quoted to 
explain Irenseus shows a wide and common preva- 
lence of the rite in times thus near to the apostles. 

9. The silence of authors covering this less than a 
century between Irenaeus and the apostles is no way 
surprising. Very many religious authors in our 
own age, as in all the Christian ages preceding, have 
failed to make any record concerning this rite. It is 
to be remembered that the great majority of Christian 
authors of former times, as of to-day, have given their 
pens to the spirit and life of religion, rather than to its 
emblems and rites. Moreover, the small number of 
Christian authors and their limited writings, and the 
pagan destruction of the writings, as of the authors, 
must lessen our surprise at this historic silence. 
Considering the unscholarly character of the Church 
in the second century, — not many wise men after 
the flesh, but the foolish things, the weak things, the 
base things of the world, — and the deadlj^ heathen 
hostility to the few books written in the interests of 
the new religion, the wonder rather is that any record 
of that century remains from a Christian pen for the 



SUMMAKY OF THE HISTORICAL ARGUMENT. 281 

ecclesiastical historian of to-daj^ The pagans did 
not mean that any should be left, and they well nigh 
carried their point. 

Considering the small number of Christian authors 
of the first two centuries, the small number of books 
written by them, the small number of even those that 
escaped the heathen persecutors, and the unimportant 
place of rites and ceremonies in primitive Christianity, 
we have left to us as much from those two hundred 
years as could be expected on Infant Baptism. 

24* 



CHAPTER XXXV. 

THE BELATIONS OF BAPTIZED CHILDREN TO THE 

CHUBCH. 

MUCH of the confusion of theory and of practice 
and of discussion on this question has arisen from 
a prior neglect to ascertain what is the constitution of 
the visible Church. On the premises and conclusions, 
scripturally opened, as we think, and closed, in the 
earlier chapters of this volume, the topic of the 
present chapter may be briefly disposed of. 

The constitution of the Church, like the constitu- 
tion and course of nature, we assume to be a divine 
arrangement. This point needs emphasis in both 
statement and acceptance, to guard against tradi- 
tional and current errors. For often an organization 
is formed, where men take large liberty in following 
human policy or fancy or bias, as if organizing an 
agricultural club ; and they adapt it to run in the 
historical rut of some provincial or sectarian interest, 
and then call that body a " church." The Church of 
God is otherwise, as being already organized, and of 
old. Its laws, therefore, like the laws of nature, are 
to be inquired into and ascertained, and then fol- 
lowed. The Constitution of the Church is not open 
to amendments, like the constitution of the United 

282 



THE EELATIONS OF BAPTIZED CHILDREN. 283 

States ; nor can any supreme ecclesiastical court get 
above it, and pass judgment on its original fitness. 
Human inquiry about it is limited to fact and import, 
and human liberty about it is limited to adoption. 

The confusion of tongues and of usages, on the re- 
lation of the baptized child to the Church, has arisen 
from the unbounded license men have assumed to 
form religious organizations, and call them ''churches." 
They vary among themselves almost as much as social 
clubs, or trade-guilds. The model of each is usually 
some other " church " of man, with variations to suit 
the " new church." 

A number of believers come together, and organize 
what they call a " church." The manual of creed 
and covenant and by-laws makes quite a book. It 
embodies an elaborate theological system, as the 
Augsburg, or Heidelberg, or Westminster. Perhaps 
it is a provincial and awkward combination from sev- 
eral creeds and one or two leading minds, in which 
some pet philosophy or hobby, or the sharp angles 
of a temporary school, are the predominant features. 
The covenant and by-laws embody a code of Chris- 
tian life, quite minute, and conservative or radical 
or ordinary, according to the tone of the leaders in 
the new enterprise. This code may all be very scrip- 
tural, and excites remark only by its position, as 
doorkeeper at the assumed Church of God. For 
how much more than conceded acceptance with God 
must be needed to make one acceptable as a candi- 
date for this bod}^ ! Think of adding, on some pen- 
tecostal occasion, and by fair examination and the 
intelligent assent of both parties, three thousand to 



284 THE CHUECH AND HER CHILDREN. 

this so-called " church." Think of five hundred of 
these as the average boy and girl of twelve years ! 

It must not surprise us, that, with rare exceptions, 
only adults are expected to unite with such bodies, 
and but few others do actually enter such '' churches." 
The examination of a child, conceded to be Christian, 
in such a creed and code, on the presumption of an 
intelligent acceptance of the same, is repugnant to 
our ideas of fitness. We refrain from the incongru- 
ity, out of respect to our common-sense, in thus pre- 
suming that boys and girls are theologians because 
they are Christians. For this, as a leading reason, so 
few Christian children enter our churches. Failing 
as we do, to discover any efficiency or magical grace 
in an unintelligent response to Latin praj^ers, we can- 
not bring ourselves to enforce this intellectual and 
philosophical ritualism on our children. Better, and 
sufficient too, their experimental understanding of 
the love of Jesus, expressed in simple phrases. Well 
would the little child of God say with the great apos- 
tle, " In the Church I had rather speak five words 
with my understanding, than ten thousand words in 
an unknown tongue." 

Or, the organization is not provincial, rustic, and 
modern, as the one supposed. Perhaps it is venera- 
ble with centuries, and continental in its enclosure of 
millions of communicants. Still it may go very wide 
of Biblical warrant and simplicity, as the one earthly 
house for the one family of God. 

The Russo-Greek Church has lately declined fel- 
lowship in the eucharist with the Anglican church, 
because the latter is not in perfect accord with it in 



THE RELATIONS OF BAPTIZED CHILDREN. 285 

dogma, and does not accept unconditionally the 
authority and acts of the first seven oecumenical 
councils. 

Such a body of religious membership and purpose, 
whether in an American village or in St. Petersburg, 
is so much other than the Church of God, that it be- 
comes a mere association, order, guild, or club of the 
religious kind. When compared with that divine 
institution set forth in the Scriptures in its august 
simplicity, it so lacks resemblance that it would seem 
to be called a '' church" by courtesy only. 

It is these additions, subtractions, variations, and 
improvements, that human hands have presumed to 
make, affecting a divine institution, that so bewilder 
the believing parent on the relations of his baptized 
child to the Church. 

What presumption in Moses, in building the taber- 
nacle, to have assumed as great departures from the 
pattern shown in the mount, under the leading of 
ambitious architects and interested upholsterers ! In 
entering such a modified and humanly improved 
tabernacle, the devout Jew may well have been in 
doubt whether the structure were the divinely ar- 
ranged house of worship, or a theatre. Moses had 
no liberty, and took none, to vary the cubits of a 
curtain, or the number of the taches, the length of a 
board, or the color of a curtain-cord. 

In the ecclesiastical history of the Christian dis- 
pensation, the first volume is The Acts of the 
Apostles. But neither the ordinary reader nor the 
extraordinary student finds there the doctrinal doors 
for admission that to-day open and close. There is 

33 



286 THE CHURCH AND HEE CHILDKE:^. 

a wide departure from primitive simplicity in this 
thing ; and it is the departure that makes the confu- 
sion on the question under discussion. Indeed, that 
departure it is, that has necessitated the discussion. 
In the beginning it was not so. And, if one finds 
himself making criticisms adverse to the positions 
set forth in this chapter, it is suggested, that, on 
reflection, he would find himself unconsciously op- 
posing positions taken from the Xew Testament, and 
opposing them by theories and practices introduced 
Ions: after the Xew Testament was written. 

It aids toward a just conclusion in this inquiry, to 
consider how the Christian Church, until compara- 
tively lately, has been accustomed to treat the chil- 
dren of her communicants. Their relations to the 
Church have been held to be very intimate and ten- 
der and sacred ; while the Church has felt a solemn 
and covenant obligation to them, and responsibility 
for them, such as she has felt toward no other class. 
She has exacted the highest possible vows for them 
from confessing parents, and then has herself as- 
sumed a care in their relioious trainincr and moral 
walk, that have marked the children of church- 
members, as in peculiar relations to her and to the 
outside world. As the great moral and religious 
educator, she has had her children as her primary 
pupils ; and her system of teaching and preaching 
and text-books has had an elaborate adaptation to 
her infantile and juvenile constituency. 

To one familiar with the routine of the old-Church 
work, this system so varied and complex, so compre- 
hensive and yet minute, so simple in practice and yet 



THE RELATIONS OF BAPTIZED CHILDREN. 287 

SO philosophical and profound in theory, is nothing 
less than amazing. In fundamental policy and com- 
pass and power, nothing now in use serves as an illus- 
tration or comparison, unless it be our national and 
omnipresent Sabbath-school system. And when we 
regard a systematic religious drill, for one definite 
end, in a proper church-line, this illustration is nigh 
to a failure. In Avhich modern system, by the by, 
has not the God of Abraham come to the rescue of 
the children of the faithful ? The Church having 
abandoned the original and divinely arranged plan, 
that her children should be her especial religious 
pupils. Providence seems to have allowed this outside 
and abnormal sj^stem to do what the Church has 
neglected to do. Perhaps a better illustration than 
our Sabbath-school system, of the care the ancient 
Christian Church assumed for her' children, may be 
found in the religious regime of the Jews, w^hich was 
personal, minute, comprehensive, vigilant, and exact- 
ing. 

In alluding to this elaborate system of the old- 
Church for the training of her children, reference is 
not had to the Biblical and spiritual correctness of 
the work done, but rather to the correct conception 
the Church had of her organic constitutional obliga- 
tion to do it, and to the fidelity and energy with 
which she has aimed to meet that obligation. With- 
out judging of the quality of the work, so much of 
which must be disapproved, even as in the modern 
Sabbath-school system, this is to be said, — that, like 
Abraham her first earthly head, she has commanded 
her children and her household after her. 



288 THE CHUECH AND HER CHILDREN. 

Until quite late in the Christian centuries, the 
notion was universal, that the children of communi- 
cants belong to the Church for nurture, as the chil- 
dren of citizens do to the state. In the civil body, 
the child is, to an extent, the ward of the state for 
protection, culture, and development, as its invested 
interest. So, in the religious body, the child has 
been held to be a member immature, for tender care 
and guarded growth. In herself a self-propagating 
body, the Church, until lately, has been able to see 
that her growth, and even her perpetuity, have too 
vital a connection with her children to allow of their 
neglect. The question of privilege, right, and obli- 
gation on the part of the child, is a question of the 
child's growth in susceptibilit3^ In other and broader 
words, it is the question of childhood universal, in the 
state, in the neighborhood, and in the family, as well 
as in the Church. This theory and practice of the old- 
Church, in regard to her children, is but an accept- 
ance of the law of self-preservation, — a first law of 
organic being; and, when well applied, it proves 
itself worthy of the divine hand that wrought it 
originally into the constitution of his own spiritual 
family. 

The modern and opposite notion, prevalent now in 
a small section of the Church, stands in striking con- 
trast with this. Under the centrifugal force from 
monarchy to democracy, and from consolidation to 
individualism, and from papacy to independency, 
started two and three centuries ago, this section of 
the Church has resolved itself into an aggregation of 
individual adults. As a logical and fitting result, it 



THE EELATIONS OP BAPTIZED CHILDREN. 289 

has come to be managed on the grade, and in the 
interests, of adults. Its public religious services are 
not adapted to children, nor much expected to benefit 
them ; while it does not provide, separately, any spe- 
cial and fitting means for their spiritual nurture. It 
is an organization of men and women, run in the 
moods and methods and interests of manhood and 
womanhood. It is as a high school, neither admitting 
primary scholars, nor contemplating a primary depart- 
ment. It stands aloof from the children of its mem- 
bers, as unfit to be taken into ecclesiastical relations, 
and incompetent to be made fit. If infant baptism 
is practised, it is as a perfunctory ritual, or beautiful 
ceremony. Little comes of it ; nothing is expected 
of it ; and nothing special is done with and for the 
subjects of it. The baptized children are not recog- 
nized as other than the unbaptized, unless by an 
occasional prayerful allusion. They are thus left to 
constitute their own religious standing. So far as 
organic and juvenile Church- work is concerned, they 
are left in painful waiting for maturity in youthful 
irregularities, for spasmodic and agonizing convic- 
tions, striking conversions, and abrupt gatherings 
into the Church. Single churches have done better, 
and taken care of their children with something of 
system and of success. In others, some relief from 
the total neglect has been found in maternal associ- 
ations. More frequently a Sabbath-school has sprung 
up outside of the Church, and independent of it, to 
supplement the inside failure, reminding one of the 
foundling hospital for abandoned offspring. 

The underlying assumption in this modern and in- 

33* 



290 THE CHURCH AND HER CHILDREN. 

novating theory is, that the parent has neither obli- 
gation nor right to enter into Church-covenant for 
the child, because thereby the perfect liberty of the 
child roay by and by seem to have been contracted. 
Abraham has no right to circumcise an infant Isaac, 
because by and by an adult Isaac may complain of 
an infringement of his personal liberties. The as- 
sumption needs only an illustrated statement to be 
rejected. It is the doctrine of liberty, equality, and 
fraternity brought to the cradle. It requires that all 
questions of parental duty, domestic as well as eccle- 
siastical, be discussed in the nursery, subject to a 
popular vote, and the counting of all hands, how- 
ever small. As well object to the establishment of 
social or educational or pecuniary relations for the 
child ; for religious relations cannot stand alone lia- 
ble to the objection. The baptismal covenant does 
not recognize the child as a party to it so much as 
the subject of it ; and it binds the parent, and with 
the parent the whole Church is bound, to insure, as 
far as possible, for that child a pre-arranged and de- 
scribed character. The rejection of this principle is 
the dissolution of the family as a spiritual unit, into 
bald, isolated individualism. Family life as an or- 
ganized, disciplinary, educating power, propagating 
its spiritual offspring by elements and laws within 
itself, and holding itself over and along from age 
to age, through Lois and Eunice and Timothy, is 
ignored. 

On this theory of independency and individualism, 
a " church " is constructed. It is based on single 
adult persons, not families ; on '' thee," and not on 



THE EELATIONS OP BAPTIZED CHILDREN. 291 

*' thee and thy seed." Additions are made to it by 
one and one, with no spiritual pedigree of antece- 
dents or consequences. It is simply club-membership, 
with no recognition of parentage or posterity. Be- 
tween such a body, and the Cliurch of God, there is 
all the difference, and utility too, that there is be- 
tween a heap of separate links and those same links 
interlocked into a chain. True, interlocking them 
infringes on their separate, inoperative existence ; 
but it makes the chain of gracious forces with which 
God is girding the world. 

We must, however, be looking to conclusions 
touching the relations of the baptized child to the 
Church. The points attained may be stated : — 

1. The family is a divine unit. This is ti^ue of its 
natural constitution, development, and obligations to 
surrounding families. Until the ' children come to 
years of assent and dissent, the individualisms and 
independencies in the family are not as separate and 
marked as the persons. In the social, mental, moral, 
and religious life, the aliment, nurture, and growth 
are one. Life in these respects, in the family, is one 
stream flowing from a parental fountain, with as many 
undivided interests in it as the house has members. 
This family unit has forces, a constitution, laws, and 
methods, within itself, making it self-propagating and 
perpetuating, as a moral organism, like the fruit-tree of 
creation, '> whose seed is in itself; " allowance always 
being gratefully made for the buddings and graftings 
of grace. So in the family, Jeroboam the son of 
Nebat, and Timothy the son of Eunice, are legiti- 
mate children. The ethics and the theology of all 



292 THE CHITBCH AND HER CHH.DREN. 

this are well compacted into the homely proverb, 
'' A chip of the old block." Hence society holds the 
neighbor, and the state the parent, responsible for 
his unadult children. 

2. The Chnrch is founded on such family units. 
In struggles for control, wise men gain possession, if 
possible, of organized centres of force, and the 
sources of power. The conquering general strikes 
for the cities, the fields of supply, and the leading 
fortifications. With their possession, all subordinate 
points come also. Treason tampers with head men, 
where, in the fall of one, a thousand fall ; and he 
who is wiser than the legislator gains control of the 
teacher and text-book of the schoolroom. The last 
and weakest and unwisest power is the power that 
individualizes personally. It is too near the atomic 
to become constructive and comprehensive and mo- 
nopolizing. But the power that individualizes by 
proxy, through control of generic centres, is greatest 
and wisest. It the nearest approximates monarchy, 
for good or ill. This principle is divinely utilized in 
the use of family units for the founding and increas- 
ing of the Church. A system of social, moral, and 
religious machinery, already constructed and run- 
ning, and ever to run, embodying the only illus- 
tration obtainable of perpetual motion, God has 
appropriated for the human force in that spiritual 
organism which is to conquer totally, and work 
alway, the gates of hell never prevailing. 

3. Gentile additions to the ancient Church were 
made by family units. What God said to Abraham 
at the founding, each of his successors said to each 



THE BELATIOKS OF BAPTIZED CHILDRElSr. 293 

Gentile coming into the Church, — "thou and thy 
seed." During all the nineteen slow centuries before 
Christ, no jot or tittle of this law failed under the Je w* 
ish dispensation of the Church. The Gentile prose- 
lytes came in by families, so far as the children were 
under the '^ year of assent," as the Jews phrased it. 
And in the fulfilling of those many prophecies concern- 
ing the enlargement of the Church by the ingathering 
of the Gentiles, thousands of proselyte families came 
in on the faith and confession of the parents. " For 
so was the custom of the Jewish nation in their use 
of baptism, when a proselyte came in, his children 
were baptized with him ; and all this upon this 
ground, that all that were related to the parent 
might come into covenant." Lightfoot makes this 
statement on the Jewish rule, as thus recorded in the 
Talmud: ''Any male child of a proselyte, that is 
under thirteen years and a day, and any female child 
that is under twelve years and a day, must be bap- 
tized."! 

4. The growth of the Church in the apostolic age 
was by such units. It was the household of Lydia, 
and of the jailer, and of Stephanas, which was added 
to the Church by the baptism of St. Paul. As the 
practice of household admission prevailed before the 
Christian dispensation, and up to that time, and as 
the New Testament shows cases of it, and nothing 
to the contrary, it may be presumed to have prevailed 
through the teaching and times of the apostles. 

5. This increase of the Church by family units 
has been a marked feature in its growth from apos- 

1 See chap. xi. 



294. THE CHUECH AND HER CHILDREN^ 

tolic times to very late centuries. The historic con- 
tinuity of this usage shows in bold outline through 
all the branches and schisms of the Church, ortho- 
dox and heterodox. Taking into account the thirty- 
seven centuries of God's one Church, the opposite is 
as a novelty of a few years, while its extent is as 
limited as its years. 

It is, of course, understood, that from time without 
date, even back into apostolic daj^s, baptism has 
admitted to the Church. While prior to that, in 
the Jewish period, baptism constituted the prose- 
lyte a member of the commonwealth only, like nat- 
uralization papers with us, yet it was only preparatory 
to the invariable consequents of circumcision and a 
sacrifice, that constituted the subject a Church mem- 
ber. With the female proselyte, the sacrifice con- 
summated the relations to the Church. 

In the Christian era, the earliest Church records 
show that baptism constituted Church membership 
without regard to age. The immaturity of the mem- 
ber, and inability to understand and embrace it, in 
no way destroyed the fact that the baptized infant 
had obtained complete membership by baptism. As 
soon as the rite was finished, the subject received the 
eucharist. This was the xo r^leior, the ritual perfect- 
ing of membership. Not only the adult, but the 
infant, received it immediately after baptism. 

The fathers are clear and full on this point. In 
his treatise concerning the apostates, Cyprian (A.D. 
244-268) makes some of the children whose parents 
fell away under persecution speak thus : " We did 
nothing : we did not of our own accord forsake the 



THE BELATIONS OF BAPTIZED CHILDREN. 295 

bread and cup of the Lord for profane rites. The 
neglect of others ruined us : our parents destroyed 
us. They deprived us of the Church as a mother, 
and of God as a father." Here Cyprian refers to the 
fact that the parents apostatized, and went to hea- 
then altars to sacrifice, carrying their baptized infants 
with them.2 

Augustine frequently and variously makes the 
same point and proof of full infant membership. 
'' We do not hear the Lord saying this concerning 
the sacrament of baptism, but concerning the sacra- 
ment of the holy supper itself, which none but the 
baptized may approach : Unless ye eat my flesh, &c. 
Dare any one say that this teaching does not pertain 
to little children, and that they can have eternal life 
without partaking of his body and blood? " ^ 

Gennadius, a presbyter of Marseilles, who flour- 
ished A.D. 495, speaking of the baptized, says, " If 
they are infants, let those who bring them respond for 
them after the manner of baptism ; and, being con- 
firmed by the imposition of hands and the anointing, 

2 " Infantes quoque, parentiim manibns vel impositi vel attract!, 
auiiserunt parviili quod, in prinio statim nativitatis exordio f iierant 
consecnti. ISTonne illi, cum judicii dies venerit, dicent : nos nihil 
fecimus, nee, derelicto cibo et poculo Domini, ad profana contagia 
sponte properavimus Perdidit nos alieua perMia ; parentes sensi- 
mus parricidas." — Cyp., De I^psis, § 9. 

^ "An vero quisquam etiam hoc dicere audebit, quod ad parvulos 
haec sententia non pertineat, possintque sine participatione corporis 
hujus et sanguinis in se habere vitam? " — Aug., de Peccator. Merit , 
Lib. 1, Cap. XX. 

Also, " Infantes sunt, sed membra ejus iBunt. Infantes sunt, sed 
sacramenta ejus accipiunt. Infantes sunt, sed mensae ejus participes 
fiunt, ut habeant in se vitam." — Aug., Serm. clxxiv. §7, ed. Paris, 
1837: or Serm. viii., De Verbis Apostoli. 



296 THE CHURCH AND HER CHH^DREN. 

let them be admitted to the mysteries of the eiicha- 
rist." 4 

It were needless to add more quotations, though 
they could be much multiplied. As it is evident that 
the Church baptized, from the earliest Christian ages, 
the children of her members, it is alike evident, that, 
for six or eight centuries from Cyprian, she gave to 
those children the communion of the Supper. This 
privilege is the highest evidence of complete and 
total membership in the Church. 

Of the error of the fathers in this matter of infant 
communion, from which the Catholic Church re- 
covered in the ninth century and later, it is not need- 
ful to speak. It has been cited only as evidence of 
infant church-membership. The line of inquiry does 
not lead us to point out and criticise the abuses of 
that divine relationship. 

It is in evidence, therefore, that in the Abrahamic 
constitution of the Church, in Gentile proselytism to 
it, in apostolic additions, and in its increase under the 
fathers down to very late yeai^s, the children of 
believers have been brought into membership. Con- 
sidering the question scripturally, historically, and 
logically, we find the baptized child in the Church. 

4 "Si parviili sint, respondeant pro illis qui eos offenmt, juxta 
Hiorem baptizandi, et sic maniis inipositione et chrismate coiu- 
muniti, encharistse inysteriis admittanlur." — GENNAD.,DeDogmat., 
Eccles. Cap. 52. 



CHAPTER XXXVl. 

THE POSITIO:^" OF BAPTIZED CHILDREN IN THE 

CHURCH. 

MAY full privileges be had without any other or 
more formal recognition ? Are they to come 
to the communion ? Are they liable to discipline? 
Ma}^ they take part in the government of the Church ? 
Are evidences of regeneration indispensable to the 
completion of all the rights of membership ? Fail- 
ing in these evidences, may they be excommuni- 
cated ? These are not unnatural questions from a 
candid inquirer, whose views on the subject are yet 
unsettled. 

It is pertinent here to assume and declare that 
baptism, in and of itself, has no efficacy. It is no 
rite in spiritual magic, to work a radical moral 
change in the subject. The touch of baptismal fin- 
gers is not ictic and efficacious for any such result, 
according to the figment of the highest ritualist. It 
is only the signature to a promissory compact. It is 
as the signing of the papers for the construction of a 
continental railway. The signing does no work on 
the road : it only pledges competent parties to see 
the work done. 

1. It is to be noted primarily and prominently that 

34* 297 



298 THE CHURCH AND HER OHILDREK. 

the position of this child is divinely arranged. The 
organism and workings of an institution, that has 
done more than any other to mould and control this 
world, have brought the child into that position. 
God shaped that institution to do that thing ; and the 
child is now, by baptism, in the place and surround- 
ings of God's intention. 

2. Moreover, the propagating power of grace is 
recognized and utilized in this position. Whatever 
forces there may be presumed to be in parental and 
family and church piety, they are concentrated at the 
very point where God has placed the child. It is 
in the very focus of religious warmth and power. 
Allow what we may or must for imperfections and 
infelicities within church relations, there are as few 
in no other earthly circle. There this child, uncon- 
scious, slowly coming into a mental and moral life, 
its infancy the best symbol of weakness, impressible, 
plastic, impotent, is placed to be moulded and nur- 
tured into a child of God. It is placed helpless in 
the strongest current of grace that flows across this 
earth, to be swept heavenward. The place is excep- 
tional by just so much as the Church differs from the 
outside world in power to train religiously. The 
rite locating the child thus is no aesthetic ceremony 
merely, of which the best and most has been said 
when it is called " touching " and '' beautiful." 

3. God expects to do much for this child in par- 
ticular. The converging of his plans at this point 
silently enunciates this expectation. All the divine 
antecedents are as preparations ; and the constitution 
of his Church has from the beginning contemplated 



T^E POSITION OF BAPTIZED CHILDREN. 299 

and anticipated that child at that formative period. 
Then, his covenant with the parent enables him to 
do more and better for that child than he can for an 
outside child. With him, as with man, sj^stem and 
plan are moral insurance toward success. These 
infant members of the Church are his primary school 
in which he has arranged a foreordaining drill for all 
the mortal years of these children. When it is con- 
sidered how seldom a Jew or a Papist becomes a 
pervert, we see how effectually this divine plan may 
be used, even when alienated to purposes so ceremo- 
nial and unspiritual. Much more, when so used for 
spiritual ends as to retain the divine co-operation, and 
the moral and religious elements are stimulated and 
subsidized, must it become a primal force in the 
reg^eneration of the race. 

4. If received and cared for by the Church in the 
spirit of this plan, the child is baptized into a reason- 
able expectation of regeneration and heaven. Cer- 
tainly no earthly surroundings could be more favorable 
were the end an ambitious worldly one. The condi- 
tion is highly hopeful for early piety ; and with any 
due regard for the covenant, and for the filling of the 
obligations on the human side, the conversion of the 
child may be confidently expected. Indeed, these 
''little ones " are to be held tenderly and prayerfully 
and workfuUy in the hands of the Church, as pre- 
sumptive communicants. Any thing less than this 
has dark shadings toward lack of faith as a con- 
tractor, and lack of work, and so breach of contract. 
At this very point it is, where the human party has so 
often failed to carry out its agreement, and so the 



300 THE CHUUCH AND HER CHILDREN. 

divine and perfect plan has been brought under 
reproach. The child has been baptized, perhaps 
ostentatiously and under admiration, and then let 
alone ecclesiastically. Of course in such cases infant 
baptism is a nullity, and comes under sectarian or 
worldly reproach. So, to speak to a business ear, 
the contract is signed with publicity, and then not 
really thrown up, but thrown aside. This is as if 
the pen that signed the Emancipation Proclamation 
were to be sacredly treasured, and the four millions 
of the document left to neglect and forgetfulness. 
The sign manual of the United States is of little 
account to them, if that is the end of it. 

5. The Church should entertain thoroughly the 
fact of infant membership. If one find it diiBcult to 
accept this position, it is well that he inquire whether 
his difficulties are grounded in the Bible, or in some 
book more recently written and published. We 
come unconsciously under traditions and usages that 
make void divine arrangements. It may be so in this 
case. With all reasonable latitude conceded for 
denominations on questions of polity, it must be 
understood, that, in the two fundamentals of the 
Church, — creed and membership, — its type must 
everywhere be one ; for those two features are prime- 
val, organic, and divine. No by-laws of the village 
" church," or sectarian hand-book, or Bibliotheque 
Royale, may derange what the one Church Manual 
of God has arranged on these two points. 



CHAPTER XXXVIL 

THE NEGLECT OF BAPTIZED CHILDREN BY THE 

CHUECH. 

BUT one finds a difiiculty in treating a child as a 
church member, because it cannot share all the 
privileges and responsibilities of membership. Is the 
objection well made ? That child has full family 
membership. It has also full national membership. 
Let it but lay claim in Austria to American citizen- 
ship, and the entire force of the United States will 
back the claim, " by the utmost exertion of the 
power of the republic, military and naval." ^ The 
freshman has full membership in the college, but not 
therefore the privileges in full of the senior. Does 
not the objection in question lie broadly against ciiild- 
hood as undistinguished from manhood ? Member- 
ship for the child in the family and in the state is 
both instant and total in the outset. It is an end, 
accomplished at the beginning. Why may it not be 
so in the Church under its present constitution ? 
When his father had said, '•' His name is John," and 
the infant had been circumcised, John the Baptist 
had membership in full in the Church of God. Cere- 
monials afterward enlarged only his privileges. Mem- 

1 Webster's Hiilseman Correspondence, Works, vi. 501. 
26 301 



802 THE CHURCH AND HER CHH^DREN. 

bership in the Church, as in the family and in the 
state, lias not growth. 

The difficulty under consideration arises frtni a 
failure to separate between membership, and the 
privileges and lights and duties of membership. 
The former is an act instant, complete, and final ; 
the latter, a matter of age, growth, and suscepti- 
bility. The minor is a citizen ; but he cannot vote, 
and is not liable to military duty till of a certain age. 
The female is a citizen, but is not liable to bear arms, 
and does not vote at any age. The child of four 
years finds his duties and privileges in the family 
very different from those of his brother of sixteen 
years ; yet the membership is equal. Suppose some 
sect in the state, Utopian and radical, should object 
to the theory and practice of infant citizenship, on 
the points that the infant cannot be a conscious party 
to an arrangement that makes it a subject of the 
government ; caimot come to the polls with its oldest 
brother and father ; cannot be drafted into the army ; 
cannot be eligible to office, and so on and on. It 
will be noted that the objections are against being an 
infant. Infant citizenship remains as a profound 
reality for the unconscious babe ; and the state makes 
it an intensely practical fact for the child, in all that 
pertains to "- life, liberty, and the pursuit of happi- 
ness " commensurate with the years of the child. 

It is seen at a glance, that the objection now under 
consideration, if well taken and sustained, reaches 
beyond the Church, and unsettles relations and mem- 
berships of childhood that long since passed into civil 
and social axioms. 



NEGLECT OF BAPTIZED CHILDREN". 303 

But another difficulty arises. If infant church- 
membership be conceded, one finds impediments and 
inconveniences in treating '' these little ones " as the 
children of the Church, and in bringing them up in 
the nurture and admonition of the Lord. Very like. 
Obedience to God is usually attended with impedi- 
ments. The Decalogue, and the Sermon on the Mount, 
when brought to practice, have been always found 
open to the same objection. The proper training of 
children is not a total luxury ; and, indeed, some do 
regard them as incumbrances. 

It can be readily seen, that the easy, comfortable 
theory of adult membership would need reconstruct- 
ing for a vast amount of Church work now left 
undone, if the children of believers were to consti- 
tute the juvenile school of the Church. 

In modifying the theory and practice of Church 
work in the line indicated, there must come in a sys- 
tematic labor for the young. When it is considered, 
that about one-half the community are minors, and 
are in the formative period for character, and that 
afterward moral teaching and influences avail mostly 
for confirmation, and but lightly for reversal in radi- 
cal changes for good or evil, is it asking too much 
that one-half the moral and religious teaching of the 
Church be in the interests of the young ? 

Yet, as it now is, how rare the Church service, in 
prayers and teachings, that is adapted to interest and 
benefit children ! The ornate essays, doctrinal and 
philosophical and controversial discussions, and the 
seminary sermons, all courteously called preaching, 
find but poor reception and response with a large 



304 THE CHURCH AND HER CHILDREN. 

portion of the adults. If the hungry sheep look up 
unfed, how must it be with the lambs ? And, when 
the shepherd does propose to feed the lambs, how the 
sheep flock about him ! 

It has been suggested that a fourth year be added 
to the present theological course in our seminaries. 
Instead of giving it to philology, ontology, neology, 
and ^gj^ptology, suppose it be devoted to a de- 
partment of Juvenile Theology, with the homiletic 
and pastoral as subdivisions. Such a man as was 
once the eminent rhetorical professor in one of our 
Eastern seminaries should not be a candidate for the 
new chair. When about to preach, on notice, to a 
New-York congregation of children, he began by 
saying, "- When I am through, I shall want you, my 
dear children, to give me an abstract of the discourse. 
You know what abstract means ? It is synonymous 
with synopsis." If Hannah, when she made the 
"little coat" for Samuel, had gotten up an overcoat 
for Elkanah, she could not have gone wider of the 
measure of the bo}\ What cutting and fitting of 
spiritual garments for children in our pulpits ! What 
capacious arm-sizes, baggy and dangling sleeves, with 
vast and solemn latitude and lonoitude of skirts ! 
When the little fellows, after the benediction, leave 
the church-door, and assay to go, if they try to carry 
the sermon they move off staggering like David in 
Saul's armor. It is all " synonymous with synopsis " 
to them. If any thing could reconcile us to a 
woman in the pulpit, it would be that Hannah might 
"from year to year " make a " little " coat for every 
consecrated Samuel in the congregation. 



NEGLECT OF BAPTIZED CHILDREN. 305 

There is a lamentable failure in appreciating child- 
hood as an age vastly important, and susceptible of 
the moulding power of the Church. The quiet, easy 
neglect, the waiting till false religious notions are 
formed, and sinful propensities and habits are boldly 
marked, is amazing. Yet why amazing, if baptized 
children are not expected to receive proper training, 
and become converts and communicants ? It is too 
much with the Church as with the state, that 
appears to have little to do with Cain till he has 
killed Abel. 

It is painfully understood that the vast work of 
the state in her criminal processes is largely the 
undoing of mistakes, the defence against evils, and 
the punishment of crimes, that have their beginnings 
far back in a neglected and abused childhood. It is 
for the Church to be made wise by this sad fact, and 
administer her divinely assigned work under the 
warning of it. When Jericho was blighted and 
wretched from bad water, the man of God '' went 
forth unto the spring of the waters," and healed 
them at the fountain. Very like he did this great 
work in a rural district and in an obscure place ; but 
that was better than purifying some now and then at 
so much a glass, retail, in a splendid establishment on 
Jericho Park. 

Our fine ministerial culture, and great sermons, 
and artistic music, and beautiful church architecture, 
are not reaching the children. The safety hydrants 
are all very well, and silver-plated, but in private 
houses. Men of God are needed, with new cruses, 
at the spring of the waters, to do wholesale work 
for all Jericho. 26* 



306 THE CHITBCH AND HER CHLLDRElSr. 

When Xavier was making his triumphal procession 
in the conversion of Asia to Jesuitism, his labors 
were intensely exhausting, and his hours for sleep few 
and uncertain. Yet he took his broken rest under 
this standing order to his attendant : '' If a child calls 
to see me, wake me." The conversion of half a 
continent lay in the wisdom and spirit of that order ; 
and three centuries attest the fidelity and success of 
the man who could not sleep when a child wished 
to speak to him. Our ministry needs greater wake- 
fulness, and a quicker ear for the calls of child- 
hood. Too many of them, it is to be feared, are like 
Choate, lying in his last chamber, and overlooking 
the sea at Halifax : '' If a schooner or sloop goes by, 
do not disturb me; but, if there is a square-rigged 
vessel, wake me up."^ 

But it is more than the pulpit, whose labor is 
requisite for this great undertaking. Some parts, at 
least, of the artistic interior of the house of God, 
might be permeated by a consecration to the produc- 
tion and manifestation and cultivation of juvenile 
piety. What church architect of modern time has 
any thought or provision for children in the house of 
God ? The seating, as the service, is on the adult 
grade ; and all within says, "• This is for men and 
women." '^ It was a beautiful device of the late 
Prince Albert of England, to erect at Windsor Castle, 
for the benefit of his young children, a statue of 
Edward VI. pointing with his royal sceptre to this 
verse on the page of an open sculptured Bible : 
' Josiah was eight years old when he began to reign ; 

2 Brown's life of Ruf us Choate, p. 349. 



NEGLECT OF BAPTIZED CHILDREN. 307 

and he did that which was right in the sight of the 
Lord, and walked in all the ways of David his 
father, and turned not aside to the right hand or to 
the left.' " ^ Why is not something of this kind as 
much in keeping with the house of worship, and as 
religiously useful, as complex arches, Ionic capitals, 
or those stained windows where some of the light 
of heaven, competing with gas, is indignantly red 
unto crimson in its struggle to get into the temple of 
the Most High ? If our tens of thousands must go 
into the building of a sanctuary, why not some of it 
be made spiritually instructive to children, rather 
than all of it sesthetically gratifying to adults ? No 
collegiate course should be run for seniors only. 
Why not in the building and furnishing and serving 
of the house of God, as in our family home, have a 
recognition of childhood in its different ages and 
interests and rights ? Parents should not build and 
occupy the house of God on the fiction of bachelor 
and maiden life. As the human race is an elongated 
family, so the Church of the day is a section of it, 
and as such should be aptly housed, as well as cul- 
tivated. 

But what is needed is an ecclesiastical training of 
the children of the Church in matters of faith and 
practice, corresponding to the civil training by the 
state in matters secular. The whole should come 
into a system commensurate with the divine obliga- 
tions set forth in the constitution of the Church, and 

3 Christ's Infant Kingdom. By Eev. J. T. Tucker. Cong. Pub. 
Society, Boston, 1870. P. 23. A smaU treatise f uU of practical 
thoughts on this subject. 



808 THE CHUECH AXD HER CHILDKEN. 

with the vast issues involved in a proper religious 
culture of the rising generation. For it is evident 

that A BETTER HANDLING OF THIS WORLD LIES IN 
A BETTER HANDLING OF THE CHILDREN. There- 
fore the prevenient wisdom of God incorporated the 
Church as both a nursing and adult organization. 

The fact has phice and pertinence here, that those 
are the best systems of government, and produce the 
highest grades of civilization in all pertaining to the 
body, property, and liberty of the citizen, where 
the state takes best in hand the education of the chil- 
dren. On the other hand, where the children are 
left, like the young in the lower animal kingdom, to 
grow up uncultured and wild, there society comes 
nearest to the savage and brute condition. 

The Church, as the embodiment of the divine 
kingdom in this world, is constituted and enjoined to 
do the very best thing religiously that the wisest 
civil government does secularly. Have commenta- 
tors and Christians j^et taken the full import of the 
phrases, '' kingdom of God," '' kingdom of Heaven " ? 
Here is implied a government having a constitution, 
laws, and a progressive, annexing administration in 
this world. It has a divine head, Avith a manage- 
ment in stewardship, as under a proxy that is procon- 
sular, legatine, or viceroyal. This divine lieutenancy 
is vested in the Church, and, indeed, is the Church. 
It must, therefore, begin where the best civil gov- 
ernment begins ; and, if it work wisely, it will spend 
a large part of its training force on childhood. It 
will be as wise and prompt and energetic, as the 
state is in securing worldly ends. For ecclesiastical 



NEGLECT OF BAPTIZED CHILDREN. 809 

fidelity and parental fidelity are the upper and lower 
hino^es on which the Church-door swing's. 

try o , 

In our day compulsory education is the crowning 
attainment of legislation in this line. The necessary 
education for the best citizenship is conceived and 
planned ; the number and ages of the children are 
tabled ; suitable teachers, buildings, text-books, and 
apparatus are made sure ; and a tax for cost is levied 
on the property of the community. This common- 
school system is minute, complex, comprehensive, and 
expensive ; and it has in it so much of power and 
utility and glory, that in places it comes nigh to 
being an idol. So the adult state educates the juve- 
nile state to be its improved successor. 

Something correspondent and commensurate should 
be the work of the Church. It may be said that 
this is done in our Sabbath-school system. Very true 
it is, that a vast amount of Christian work is accom- 
plished by this organization, and but for it the spir- 
itual privileges of the young would be deplorable. 
Yet it is to be considered, that, as a general thing, it 
is started, controlled, and held responsible outside of 
the Church. The system is a voluntaiy endeavor to 
do what the Church has failed to do. Originally it 
aimed to benefit the poor and neglected, who had 
no personal or family connection with the sanctuary. 
Here it found a legitimate and unoccupied province 
for religious labor. But when, starting outside, it 
assumed the main spiritual care of the children of 
the Church, it usurped a province ; though it must be 
said, that the usurpation was welcomed by an indo- 
lent Church, and an alienation of office and work 



310 THE CHUKCH AKD HER CHILDREN. 

was allowed by the Church, that is totally unconstitu- 
tional so far as her own children are concerned. An 
irresponsible proxy service cannot thus meet an 
organic obligation. 

The pleasant and honorable and profitable relations 
of the Sabbath schools to the Church are well illus- 
trated by the private-school system as related to the 
state. The State of Massachusetts may well foster 
her Phillips and Bradford and Holyoke schools, and 
be as much honored as honoring in the act. But the 
duty of the Commonwealth to the masses of her chil- 
dren may not be thus delegated to private corpora- 
tions. 

The Sabbath-school sj^stem has grown up quite 
naturally around the unprelatical branch of the 
Church. In the extreme oscillation of the ecclesias- 
tical pendulum from papacy through English episco- 
pacy, it went over into bald individualism. Many a 
good rite and ceremony and system was left, because 
it stood connected with an ecclesiasticism justly 
offensive. The churchly culture of the children was 
abandoned with the old Church, and dropped into 
the family of the dissenter, and then it dropped 
farther into the Sabbath school. Some pleasing indi- 
cations there are, that the pendulum inclines to a 
return. 

A most serious objection lies against this delegation 
of a sacred trust to train her children, in the fact 
that the Church loses sight of them as her children. 
She no longer recognizes them as the baptized. The 
baptismal act is ignored in their education by proxy, 
and the seal of the covenant is covered and forgot- 



NEGLECT OF BAPTIZED CHILDREN. 811 

ten in the miscellany of the schoolroom ; albeit the 
infant robes of the occasion may be carefully honored 
in their preservation as they were in their prepara- 
tion and use. The school itself can make no distinc- 
tion ; and so it comes to pass, that, from the day of 
the baptism of the child, the act is fading away into 
forgetfulness. The baptized and the nnbaptized, in 
the Church and out of it, are treated with an undis- 
criminating sameness. If this neglect, now so habit- 
ual, is to be regarded as normal, and the '-' beautiful 
ceremony " is to be the end of interest and respon- 
sibility, it becomes a diflBcult thing, not to say 
impossible, to show any divine authority, utility, or 
responsibility in the rite. 

The question is frequently raised. Why is infant 
baptism so much neglected ? The answer is easy, 
and in this connection pertinent, — Because baptized 
children are so much neglected. In the failure to 
keep up a recognition of them, or show any discrim- 
inating interest in them, the ceremony appears as a 
pleasant nullity. The three parties to the act, the 
parental, ecclesiastical, and divine, so far as after- 
work is concerned, seem to be hypothetic. Their 
relations to the child, as baptized, do not show con- 
tinuance ; and their act appears to be one without 
practical consequences. Therefore the Christian of 
average practical sense neglects to keep up a cause 
that has no intended and elaborated effects. So far 
as the ceremony claims to be a covenant or contract, 
it seems to him like signing papers for the waste- 
basket, and he declines to sign. 

It would be quite otherwise if the Protestant 



812 THE CHUKGH AND HER OHILDEEK. 

Church held the theory of the Papal and Greek, that 
baptism properly administered is invariably accom- 
panied by spiritual regeneration, and is the procuring 
cause of it. But Protestantism holds to no such 
ceremonial salvation. Baptism with us is no opus 
operatum^ an act of inherent, regenerating efficiency, 
a signature that pays a note instead of promising to 
pay. And it will be only simple justice to the 
Psedobaptist theory, and creditable to candor, that 
those rejecting it accept this emphatic declaration. 



CHAPTER XXXVIIL 

WHAT CAN THE CHTJECH BO FOR HER CHILDREN? 

"TTT"!! AT can be done by the Church in her offices, 
V V on a plan, specifically and continuously, for 
the children of the Church ? Reserving the principal 
outline of labor to be unfolded in a separate chapter, 
the question may be answered now, subordinately, 
in three particulars. 

1. The Church may provide that her leading ser- 
vant bestow proportional labor on the children in his 
congregational services. In proportion to their num- 
ber, the public exercises of the sanctuary should be 
made to come down into the range of their under- 
standing and improvement. Indeed, for the highest 
benefit of all, it might be well for the preacher usu- 
ally to strike for this. For the gospel is a system of re- 
ligious truth for all, and its presentation should strike 
below, rather than above, the average multitude. 
That can be only a fractional gospel sermon, and 
therefore should be very occasional, whose scholas- 
tic and philosophic thought only a few can compre- 
hend ; and it is an abuse of the pulpit as a divine 
structure, to devote it, except on special occasions, 
to the latest, and therefore most dubious and ab- 
struse, ethical ideas of the age. It is not its calliug 

27 313 



814 THE CHURCH AND HER CHILDREN. 

to keep abreast, in its ordinary and popular min- 
istrations, of all philosophical and profound schol- 
arship, even on questions related to natural and 
revealed religion. Rather should it keep the leading 
ideas of Paul and John and David and the Lord 
Jesus, side by side with the thronging and unlettered 
multitude. '^ The common people heard Him gladly." 
Christian scholarship has its place, and none more 
honorable, important, or exacting of labor ; but it is 
not the pulpit. That is the platform for the populace, 
where men, women, and children maj^ be taught how 
to glorify God, and enjoy him forever. Abstruse 
learning, even on practical themes, can find other 
and more serviceable methods of utterance. How- 
ever much a teacher may know, he ought not to 
obtrude logarithms and the Mecanique Celeste into 
the common school. Ten years of monastic life, 
with books and professors, may well be suspected of 
a range of topics and discussions more learned than 
profitable ; and the cultured few, and the society, as 
distinguished from the Church, are more likely to 
stimulate than to check and turn this drift of ele- 
vated thought. The New-England pulpit, especially, 
has taken a pride in its intellectual character, the 
religious and spiritual results of which are yet un- 
declared. The jury are out, and the verdict will not 
come in for a generation or two. 

With this patronizing of sermons called "great," 
" able," and '-'- magnificent," and with ministerial 
struggles, if not successes, in this line, the Church 
will see the need of claiming a proportionate labor 
of the pulpit for the young. As it is, probably not 



WHAT CAN THE CHURCH DO? 815 

one sermon in ten is intelligible, and adapted to this 
half the congregation. The learned Peter is busy 
with his sheep, and finds slight arrangements or con- 
veniences in the fold for the lambs. 

2. The unseemly exclusion of the children from 
the congregation may be avoided. We have already 
noticed that the human reconstruction of the Church, 
in her creed, forms of admission, instruction, and 
general characteristics, indicates an organization for 
adults. Her Sabbath congregations are assuming 
more and more this character of childless assemblies. 
The children are largely absentees. The uncomfort- 
able sittings for children, the expensive rentals, and 
the adult and scholarly exercises of the pulpit, ex- 
plain their absence. A crowded, joyous, and well- 
administered Sabbath-school comes often in suggest- 
ive contrast with deserted pews, on the same day and 
under the same roof. Such facts are making the 
grade easier from two sermons a day to one ; and 
possibly, by and by, the superintendents may be 
graduates of some preparatory school, and compete 
with the pastors for the larger congregation in their 
half of the day. If that time come, we may expect 
to see the worshipping congregation restored to its 
normal condition, as composed of men, women, and 
children. 

3. There may be some public recognition of the 
divine classification of the children. Adult church- 
members are distinguished, and in various ways, from 
the rest of the congregation. Friendship for God, 
the utility of church-membership, and the benefits 
generally arising from church organization, require 



316 THE CHUECH AND HER CHILDEEN. 

this distinction. Yet there is nothing correspondent 
concerning baptized children. With the exception 
of occasional memorial words on baptismal daj^s, at 
the communion table, or preparatory service for it, 
their baptism fades from public recognition with the 
public view. In the medley of childhood life they 
are as other children ; and very early it comes to 
pass, that only the church record and parental memo- 
ries can tell who they are. Sometimes the record is 
a blank ; and, in our brief pastorates, the she{)herd 
who carried the lamb is often a man of to-day, — 

" To-morrow to fresh woods, and pastures new." 

The ignoring of a divine classification makes the 
ordinance as an act without a consequence, a mere 
semblance, that disappears with tlie shadow of the 
baptismal pageant as it goes down the aisle. Infant 
baptism must show its significance, and gain its offered 
advantages, by a care of the baptized separately and 
as such. For tlieir condition is foreign to that of all 
other children, and calls for treatment on a divine 
method, '' in the nurture and admonition of the 
Lord." 

Something would be gained in this direction if the 
baptized children Avho are old enough to receive 
public instruction, and partake in public worship, 
should attend the preparatory lecture. As members 
of the church, and prospective communicants, the 
service could be adapted to them without detracting 
from its interest and usefulness for the adults. Thus 
a lively and constant impression would be made on 



WHAT CAN THE CHUKCH DO? 317 

them of their infant dedication and of the claims of 
Christ, while the expectation wonld be made more 
deep and serious, that they should soon be ready to 
show forth the Lord's death at his table. 

27* 



CHAPTER XXXIX. 

THE ANCIENT TREATMENT OF BAPTIZED CHILDREN. 

EACH church, as each pastor for the time, would 
naturally have peculiar ways of doing this, as 
specially adapted to circumstances ; but the thing 
will, for substance, be the same when done. It will 
be the moral, social, and religious culture of the bap- 
tized children as church-members. 

The work of the early Church for her catechu- 
mens is the best illustration of what is here meant. 
Having been admitted to membership by baptism, 
the Church, within herself and by her appointed 
teachers, put them, with the unbaptized proselytes, 
under a system of training in the theory, doctrine, 
and practice of the Church, with reference to the 
full enjoyment of its privileges, and the assumption 
of its duties. Their scheme of education anticipated 
the time when the children should come into the 
place of the parents ; and they therefore labored to 
bring them forward as far as human aid might '' unto 
the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ." 
And the very early impression made on those little 
ones was the instilled expectation of living a Chris- 
tian life in the full prinleges and duties of the 
Church. If the fathers erred in an excessive and 

318 



THE Ali^CIENT TREATMENT. 319 

vain ritualism in this line, we should not therefore 
reject a theory that was legitimate from the constitu- 
tion of the Church, and which has eminently common- 
sense, as well as Scripture, for its basis. 

This class of catechumens, made up of baptized 
children and adult candidates for a profession of 
religion, were instructed by themselves, and in pri- 
vate rooms in the Church. Such topics as repent- 
ance, forgiveness, a holy life, and the nature and 
use of baptism, led off in the instructions. An 
exposition of the creed followed, with an account of 
the origin and authority of the Scriptures, scriptural 
biographies and incidents. The teachings were rudi- 
mental, and the style simple, as adapted to children 
both in years and in grace. We have a good sample 
extant of their teachings in the twenty-three lectures 
of Cyril, bishop at Jerusalem, born there about A.D. 
315. These were prepared for the catechumens ; 
eighteen on the creed, and five on the ordinances of 
the Church. 

Under this head in our discussion Biinsen has some 
very pertinent suggestions that we insert in sum- 
mary. 1 

He would reform the baptismal sacrament in several 
particulars. The consecration it symbolizes he would 
couvsider progressive and incomplete till the baptized 
infant has come forward to a Christian life and adult 
years in the Church. The notion that baptism is 
needful to rescue the dying infant from future peril 
must be regarded as a superstition. The true idea 
of the ordinance must be received, " that the bap- 

iHippOLYTUs, vol. iii. pp. 211-216. Longmans, London, 1852. 



820 THE CHUECH AND HER CHH^DREN. 

tism of new-born children is the outward sign of the 
vow of the parents to dedicate their child to God, as 
his gift intrusted to them, and to prepare it by a 
Christian education for becoming a member of the 
Christian Church, until it be itself able to profess the 
faith in Christ." When the ceremony is performed, 
the duty of the parents, sponsors, and the Church, as 
sureties for a Christian education, should be made 
very prominent and imperative, due discrimination 
being had in the case of an adult. 

As to the Sabbath services, instead of " disgusting 
them with it by making them listen to sermons they 
cannot understand, and which are in some respects 
totally unfitted for them, a school should be estab- 
lished for the younger ones, which, being short, and 
congenial to their feelings, might make an impression, 
and be beneficial to them." 

He suggests four baptismal festivals for the year. 
'' On each of these days, all children who have been 
born in the intermediate time will be baptized. The 
thanksgiving of mothers would most naturally form 
a part of such a congregational festival, and consti- 
tute a visible bond of sisterhood among the mothers, 
whatever might be their rank." 

The baptismal day should be made " a congrega- 
tional and church festival," marked and made con- 
spicuous, both in honor of the rite, and for those 
benefits from it that only marked publicity can 
secure. 

On one of these festivals the children of a certain 
age and aptness could be admitted to the catechetical 
school, with admonition and prayer and blessing ; the 



THE ANCIENT TREATMENT. ' 321 

impression being constant and deepening, that under 
this training, and as baptized children, they are 
expected to be, ere long, spiritually fitted for the 
communion of the Church. 

The passage of the child from the merely ceremo- 
nial to the full Christian status in the Church, when 
with a spiritual delight it enters into the enjoj^ment 
of all its privileges, should be characterized by ser- 
vices as solemn and instructive as so important a step 
demands. 

Taking the children to the catechetical school, and 
to certain services of the Church, must be regarded 
as necessary and ordinary duties in matter of course, 
a part of the life-work of. the body of Christ. 

But we cite the suggestions of Biinsen and the cate- 
chetical school of the ancients as merely illustrative, 
entitled only to so much regard as their historical 
and practical worth laay ask of us. The necessities 
of the modern Church require a juvenile department; 
and be it ancient or modern in its model, or a wise 
compound of both, it should come in, and take a 
prominent and permanent place, as one of the work- 
ing departments in the Church. She owes it to the 
Head of the Church and to the world, to develop 
and operate a sj^stem of religious training for her 
children, as universal and thorough and permanent, 
as the secular training that the state furnishes to its 
juvenile citizens. Meanwhile, the Sabbath-school 
should be put forward with all religious energy and 
honor, holding relations to the Church-school much 
like those that the congregation holds to the Church. 
Aside from the obvious divine obligation in the very 



322 THE CHUECH AND HER CHILDREN. 

organization to do this, there are other reasons neither 
few nor obscure. 

1. The juvenile membership has a claim to their pro- 
portion of the interest and labors of the Church. As 
at present, the sermons and lectures and prayers and 
pastoral work are principally for those who have 
passed childhood. But the wants and rights of the 
younger ones, as members, should not be disregarded, 
and themselves thrust back. On a memorable occa- 
sion, the Saviour "• was much displeased " at such a 
course ; and his rebuke of it should never lose its 
power. 

2. Their location, as divinely assigned, demands 
this especial attention. In the current of events, 
and in the economy of grace, God has given to these 
children this place within the enclosure of his visible 
kingdom, and for a purpose. It is the very centre of 
spiritual light and life and force. No other position 
is so full of hope for an unregenerate child, because 
God has centred his covenant promises there. It is 
a place full of encouragement and expectation, if the 
Church will fill it with adapted labor. 

3. Their age invites to this separation and concen- 
tration of labor. In their tender years, they are as 
helpless and dependent for moral and religious truth 
as they are for food and clothing and housing, while 
their hearts are plastic and receptive, and their sim- 
ple faith is almost without limit. A loving, friendly 
hand, studious of child-nature, can lead -them where 
it will ; and the Xavier who gives up slumber at 
any midnight hour to the calling little one may 
safely leave the proselyting of men to more ambi- 



THE ANCIENT TREATMENT. 323 

tious teachers in the noonday crowd. These young 
hearts present a strange contrast with the coldness 
and hardness and cultivated scepticism of adult years, 
on which so much clerical labor is vainly expended. 

4. These child-members are the Church in germ. 
They are what the nursery-rows are to the future 
fruit-orchard. If budded, they have passed under 
the divine and human hand of foreordination, and 
the fruits of the Spirit have already been gathered 
somewhat, and a full harvest is awaited with cer- 
tainty. If unbudded, they unconsciously solicit and 
wait for a simple process that will forestall the very 
laborious, late, and often fatally delayed work of 
grafting old trees. Indeed, a State conference of 
Churches might do a more unprofitable thing than to 
hold one annual meeting in Rochester, N.Y., and 
spend one long recess in the vast nurseries there in 
the budding-season. For the Church of the future 
does lie potentially in her child-members; and we 
have been paying far too much attention relatively 
to old wild olive-trees. 

A thoughtful, educating Christian cannot fail to 
see the immense importance of the point here made ; 
and a working, praying Church will feel the need of 
the separated class in question. An opportunity is 
here offered that it is extremely unwise to lose, and, 
when lost, the damage is wide-reaching, as always 
when a divine plan is marred. 

We have said that the Church will feel the need 
of this separated class. For this system of religious 
training should be ecclesiastical, and not pastoral 
merely, that it may have an inwrought and organic 



324 THE CHURCH AND HER CHH^DEEN. 

permanence in the Church, and so an independence 
of the changes and intermissions and moods in multi- 
plex pastorates. In these unfortunately frequent min- 
isterial changes, it is happening that the history of 
many a Church is made up of a series of prefaces, 
and of diagrams of hypothetic work. If in these 
changes only the records and the meeting-house, 
and possibly the creed, hold over, the spiritual fore- 
casting for the community cannot be very hopeful. 
It is seedtime all the year round ; and it comes to be 
said, '' One soweth, and another" — sows. 

A glance into an ancient catechumenium, or sacred 
schoolroom, will show the nature and aptness and 
power of the system proposed. The room is private 
for the time for this purpose. Baptized children, and 
candidates for baptism, young or old, if old enough 
to be instructed, compose the audience. The in- 
structor corresponds to our Sabbath-school superin- 
tendent, or Bible-class teacher. Sometimes, however, 
he is what the ancient Church styled a deacon, pres- 
byter, or even bishop. Possibly the class is special, 
being made up of rustic women and girls of low in- 
telligence ; when the teacher is a deaconess. The 
topics are the simplest in a course of sacred instruc- 
tion, varying and progressive with the attainments 
of the class. Clemens Romanus, possibly contempo- 
rary with the apostles, in an apocryphal, though very 
early epistle, is represented as comparing the Church 
to a ship. In it, he says, the bishop is the pilot, the 
presbyters are the mariners, the deacons are the 
chief oarsmen, and the catechists are those who give 
information about the voyage, take fare, and admit 



THE ANCIENT TREATMENT. 325 

passengers. So they prepare the catechumens to 
make the voyage of life successfully. Such a cate- 
chist was the great Origen at Alexandria, when only 
eighteen years of age. 

Change now the time from the third to the nine- 
teenth century, the room also to one of our beautiful 
chapels, and the pupils to our little ones of four 
years and upward, who, like Samuel and Josiah and 
John and Timothy, have been very early dedicated 
to God. Let such also be brought in, as Edwards 
speaks of in his '-' Narrative of Surprising Conver- 
sions : " — 

" It has heretofore been looked on as a strange 
thing, when any have seemed to be savingly wrought 
upon, and remarkably changed in their childhood ; 
but now, I suppose, near thirty were to appearance 
so wrought upon between ten and fourteen years of 
age, and two between nine and ten, and one of them 
about four years of age. . . . Yea, there are several 
numerous families, in which, I think, we have reason 
to hope that all the children are truly godly, and 
most of them lately become so." 

Let the room be made attractive and beautiful 
by whatever can interest and instruct a sacred 
childhood. The family room of Doddridge, as a 
boy, is suggestive. Dutch tiles, painted with Scrip- 
ture scenes, ornamented the fireplace. Here it was 
Adam, Eve, and the serpent ; there, cruel Cain, or 
the ark ; there, Joseph in the pit, Elisha's bears, or 
the stern men ordering the children away from Jesus. 
Again and again the anxious mother told the stories, 
but specially that of the babe in the manger, to her 

28 



326 THE CHURCH AND HER CHILDREN. 

sickly boy, "poor little Philip." Hence the man of 
God, and the Family Expositor. 

The best talent in the Chnrch for jnvenile teach- 
ing should be drafted for the place. Hearts in sym- 
pathy with children, and with the Lord Jesus, will 
alone answer the demand. Borrow the best charac- 
teristics of the Sabbath-school most successful in win- 
ning children to the Saviour. Versatility in the 
exercises, an all-pervading cheerfulness, and a tender, 
loving piety, must be predominant, while the paren- 
tal prayer and anxiety and expectation, that have 
crowned the best maternal associations, should per- 
vade the room as an influence. As the parents 
think of their own Church relations, and are con- 
scious of a separateness and an unlikeness from the 
rest of the congregation, these children should be 
made to think of their seclusion from others, and to 
have a growing expectation of the most sacred of 
Church privileges with their parents. The teachings 
will point significantly to this, while they outline the 
life of the child whom God loves. 

It might be well to associate, with these, those chil- 
dren unbaptized, as well as adults, who give evidences 
of piety, and nvdj therefore be considered as candi- 
dates for the Church. Such was usage in the early 
Church. They would then, with proper deliberation 
and a safety in examination, together with suitable 
preliminary instruction, be prepared for admission to 
the Church. Thus man}^ of the hinderances, incon- 
veniences, and evil results attending the present 
methods of admission, would be avoided. 

The impetuous and ardent would in such a class- 



THE ANCIENT TEEATMENT. 327 

room find a sacred retreat for both reflection and 
instruction, and for the developing and enjoying of 
all the spiritual life they may have. By this prudent 
delay young converts would come under such super- 
vision and obligation and expectations as their con- 
dition so naturally demands. Their denominational 
preferences would be insured, and their membership 
put in a reasonable anticipation ; while, if not truly 
regenerate, they would be stayed from a premature 
profession of religion, and they and the Church be 
spared the common sorrow and mortification and 
damage of unworthy membership. 

To such a class-room, also, the very opposite of 
the impetuous and ardent could be persuaded to 
come ; those tender-hearted, timid, and doubting 
ones, evidently disciples, so m^anj^ of whom are found 
lingering for years around the door of the Church. 
They would go to this class-room, and there probably 
they would gain knowledge and confidence and 
courage to go farther. 

Perhaps the greatest gain, however, to be obtained 
from this school of the Church would be the dis- 
covery of Christians. It is a noteworthy fact, that 
frequently persons of adult years are found, who are 
living as good a Christian life comparatively as could 
be expected, when the general presumption is that 
they are not Christians. In a time of religious fervor 
and of conversions, they are supposed to become 
converts ; and pastors and examining committees 
meet them among the candidates for membership. 
But they cannot tell when they gave their hearts to 
God, and began to love the Lord Jesus Christ. 



828 THE CHURCH AND HER CHILDREN. 

Allowing for tlie ordinary fluctuations in religious 
experience, they say that they have always felt as 
they now do. They cannot recall a time when they 
did not love God, and his people and Church and 
service. 

What is the inference? That, in many cases of 
this kind, they became children of God back of any 
knowledge by the Church, and of any present per- 
sonal remembrances of their own. Far back, when 
tlie cradle was nearer to them than an unmotherly 
church, God, by some of his simple processes in 
showing Jesus to a little child, brought them into his 
kingdom. Now, after ten, thirty, seventy years, the 
Church has just found it out! An unfortunate, 
uncherished, and therefore undeveloped Cliristian life, 
for all this period of gray dawn, like arctic daj^s 
where sunrise is ahuost a failure ! The fruits of the 
spirit uncultured and unharvested, because the field 
has been unrecognized and unfenced as a section of 
the holy land ! Lambs here and there undiscovered 
in the rougher, wilder parts of the pasture, and no 
shepherd to " gather them with his arm, and carry 
them in his bosom!" How nigh unto perishing many 
of them must have come, worried of wild beasts, 
shot at and sorely grieved of the archers, and lying 
outside the long nights under windy storm and tem- 
pest ! Possibly to save them from all this it is that 
the great Shepherd takes certain lambs into his 
upper fold, where they will be cared for. 

Surely the mother Church should have discern- 
ment enough to recognize her children, even though 
quite young, and should be willing to give place and 



THE ANCIENT TREATMENT. 329 

time for the discovery. The mother should be sensi- 
tive to the slightest infant warmth and pulse and 
breathing. 

It may be that we have become unduly ambitious 
of the rough-and-tumble of those violent adult con- 
versions that figure so prominently in some narra- 
tives of revivals, and in the one-sided biographies of 
persons rarely seen alive. 

But, be all this as it may, the Church could have 
this class-room, where some of her officers, with the 
tenderness and earnestness and aptness of spiritual 
experts, could discover among the little ones the 
incipient germs of grace. Then, if some little Oba- 
diah is preparing to say in later days, '' I thy servant 
fear the Lord from my youth," the Church will be in 
a way to discover the pious boy betimes. As it is, 
many a Church is like Eli, when '' his eyes began to 
wax dim," and he perceived not that God had shown 
grace and favor to the child, "' till the Lord called 
Samuel again the third time." 

28* 



CHAPTER XL. 

TO AND FOR AND ABOUT PARENTS. — CONCLUSION. 

AT high water, on a crownmg flat in Northern Min- 
nesota, two canoes rest motionless. They wait 
for any slightest breeze or current or oar-stroke to 
give direction. A few negligent dips of the paddle 
may doom one to lie up a wrecked waif somewhere 
with Franklin, among the icebergs of the Arctic ; 
while the other is wisely and kindly started south- 
ward, to drift under magnolia blossoms into the 
sunny gulf. 

It is very well to say that every one must paddle 
his own canoe ; but it is not too much to ask that 
parents take the laboring oar, when their children, 
in the opening voyage for life, may catch their destiny 
from the slightest influences. 

'' From the same cradle's side, 
From the same mother's knee, 
One to long darkness and the frozen tide, 
One to the peaceful sea." 

The words of Cyprian, already quoted, where he 
makes the ruined children plead in the Judgment Day, 
will often come back with an anxious memory : '' We 
did nothing : we did not of our own accord forsake 

330 



TO AND FOR AND ABOUT PARENTS. 331 

the bread and cup of the Lord for profane rites. 
The neglect of others ruined us. Our parents de- 
stroyed us : they deprived us of the Church as a 
mother." 

The influences from the relioious or unrelimous 
surroundings of a child are often determining and 
foreclosing, while yet a slight over-influence would 
change the direction. Alexander, though conqueror 
of the known world, could never overcome certain 
defects of gait and manner that he had acquired 
from Leonidas, his teacher in childhood ; while the 
Gracchi owed much of the beauty and force of 
their eloquence to the purity and grace of the lan- 
guage of their mother. 

At the period of sacred dedication, and in the very 
early years of juvenile training, these delicate influ- 
ences are predestinating. The canoe is taking its 
direction ; the future conqueror is assuming gait and 
manner ; and childish lips, in unconscious imitation 
of the mother-tongue, are framing the coming 
orations. 

It is true many parents take but little interest in 
this ordinance of infant consecration in our Prot- 
estant churches. But the cause, reasons, necessities, 
and opportunities for interest are not well given to 
them. In the unprotestant churches, where so 
much is made of the ordinance, though unscriptu- 
rally and unreasonabh% there is no lack of interest, 
even to an anxious and painful extent. With us, 
parental hearts, regenerate and controlled by love 
for the Lord Jesus, would respond warmly and 
strongly to any religious endeavors of the Church in 



332 THE CHUECH AND HEK CHILDREN. 

the welfare of their children. It is not in the heart 
of father or mother to faint or fail, when the com- 
bined people of God propose a spiritual favor for 
their child. 

Let it only be known and seen that the arrange- 
ment of God proposes to place the children of 
believers in separation, as in a place of divine atten- 
tion and covenant promise, and of religious labor 
and expectation of salvation above all others, and 
Christian parents will answer joyfully and energeti- 
cally. This is precisel}^ where the constitution of 
the Church of God would place the child of the 
covenanting believer. But the Church, failing to 
apprehend the intent of her organization in this 
regard, and keeping onl}^ the adult half of her cove- 
nant, slights her vast privilege, loses her opportunity, 
and so neglects to present this inducement and 
appeal and obligation to her parental members. 

Let a Christian mother know that there are times 
and occasions and services when all the devout force 
of the Church is concentrated on the children of the 
Church, for their moral training, safe entertainment, 
religious instruction, and conversion, and the reasons 
and influences must be strong and persistent on her 
to keep her child from that group. Let her know, 
that, from the da3^s of Abraham, it has been the habit 
of God, by promise, to give a discriminating and 
very tender interest to the children within that 
sacred circle, and her heart will j-earn for the day 
when her loved one may be placed in it. Let her 
know that the leading men and women of the 
Church, down along the ages, '' who through faith 



TO AND FOR AND ABOUT PARENTS. 333 

have subdued kingxloms, wrought righteousness, 
obtamed promises, stopped the mouths of lions, 
quenched the violence of fire, escaped the edge of 
the swoi'd, out of weakness were made strong, waxed 
valiant in fight, turned to flight the armies of the 
aliens," and have made the dark pages of human 
history luminous with their biographies, have been 
almost totally those whom God has entered as infants 
in this training-school ; and with what longing and 
expectation and prayer will she enter her child, and 
ask to have it enrolled on such a catalogue I Indeed, 
parents need only to have the divine inducements 
presented, and opportunities offered, and they will 
show an intense interest in this ordinance ; for it has 
a divine adaptation to the parental heart that grace 
has warmed up with a spiritual tenderness and 
anxiety for one's offspring. 

Parents are not only quick to recognize any aux- 
iliary aid in the proper education of their children ; 
but they readily discern the ease and power with 
which slight causes work great results, and small 
opportunities mature into immense advantages. 

Some of our Western building-stone, when fresh 
from its native bed, can be cut and carved with the 
ease and grace of a soft marble or hardening stucco. 
But when the sun and the rain, the weather and the 
years, have lain on it, it takes to itself the resistance,, 
and needs the chisel, of Quincy granite. Then when 
the architect would give it new forms, and ornament 
it with scrolls and metopes and legends and sculp- 
tured heads, he must expend a labor that ignores 
economy. 



334 THE CHUECH AND HER CHILDBED. 

Few men have exercised a power for the Church 
so wide and permanent as Origen ; yet its founda- 
tions were laid in his childhood-home, and before he 
was seventeen. He Avas trained from the cradle in 
the Scriptures, and a family piety early took posses- 
sion of him, while he daily memorized some portion 
of the word of God. So steadfast was his juvenile 
piety, that, when his father was about to suffer mar- 
tyrdom, only the hiding of the lad's clothes by his 
mother kept him from sharing the violent death with 
him. Thus held back, he wrote to him, "- Father, 
take heed ; let not your care for us work a change in 
your purpose," — a noble testimony to parental fidel- 
itj^ and the rich and early fruit of infant dedication. 

Neander pays a beautiful yet simply just tribute to 
Christian mothers in their work for the Church : — 

" By them the first seeds of Christianity were 
planted in the souls of those who afterward produced 
great effects as teachers of the Church. Tlie pious 
Nona, by her praj'ers and the silent influence of the 
religion which shone through her life, gradually won 
over to the gospel her Jmsband Gregory, who had 
belonged to an unchristian sect ; and he became a 
devoted bishop. Theh first-born son was carried, 
soon after his birth, to the altar of the Church, where 
they placed a volume of the Gospels in his hands, 
and dedicated him to the service of the Lord. The 
example of a pious education, and his early consecra- 
tion, first received from his mother, of which he was 
often reminded, made a deep impression on the son ; 
and he compares his mother with Hannah, who con- 
secrated Samuel to God. This impression abode 



TO AND FOR AND ABOUT PARENTS. 335 

upon him, while exposed, during the years of his 
youth which he spent at Athens, to the contagion 
of the paganism which there prevailed." This son 
Avas afterwards the distinguished Christian and 
Church teacher, Gregory of Nazianzum. 

^^ The pious Anthusa of Antioch retired from the 
bustle of the great world, to which she belonged by 
her condition, into the still retreat of domestic life. 
Having lost her husband at the age of twenty, from 
regard to his memory, and a desire to devote herself 
wholly to the education of her son, she chose to 
remain a widow; and it was owing in part to this 
early, pious, and careful education, that the boy 
became afterwards so well known as the great 
Churcli-teacher, John Chrysostom." 

'' A truly pious mother had seasonably scattered 
the seeds of Christianity in Augustine's heart while 
yet a child. The incipient germs of his spiritual life 
were unfolded in the unconscious piety of childhood. 
Whatever treasures of virtue and worth the life of 
faith, even of a soul not trained by scientific culture, 
can bestow, was set before him in the example of his 
pious mother. The period of childlike, unconscious 
piety was followed, in this case, by the period of self- 
disunion, inward strife, and conflict." The years 
were long and weary for the unbeheving, wayward 
son, and the praying, pleading Monica. In luxurious 
and profligate Carthage, in paganized Rome, and in 
Milan too, Augustine was a Manichean, a Platonic, 
and a New-Platonic, the proud, ambitious, unchristian 
philosopher. All this time, he says, his mother 
''- wept for him more than a mother who is following 



336 THE CHURCH AND HER CHILDREN. 

her son to the tomb ; " while her greatest hunian 
comfort came in the words of a good bishop : " It is 
not possible that the child of so many tears should 
perish." Meanwhile Augustine, held by the child- 
hood lessons of the mother and by the convictions of 
his manhood, confesses that he was in " a continual 
torment and aoitation of mind." Throuo^h all moral 
perils and wanderings, those early ties to a better 
way held him. Through long and terrible storms 
the ship dragged anchor, but never parted cable. 
Home influences, and parental prayers and teachings^ 
prevailed, and Augustine was saved for eminence in 
the Church. 

It was once our hap to spend a drizzly, foggy 
week-day in Quebec ; and one stroll led to the cathe- 
dral. Its open doors to worshippers for all days and 
almost all hours beckoned us in. Solitary devotees 
came and went, — the banker, fresh from his desk of 
pounds and shillings, the hod-carrier, the washer- 
woman, and she who rustled in silks. Once within, 
they all seemed alike reverent and devout, and on an 
equality. Here and there, wide apart and lonely, 
they told their beads and pattered praj^er, and de- 
parted. Up a side aisle, and almost stealthilj^, a man, 
poorly clad, led two little girls, the younger not more 
than three or four. They paused and knelt before a 
pictured crucifix ; and with a woman's carefulness 
and tenderness the man placed the little ones in the 
attitude of worshippers, with folded hands and up- 
lifted eyes. Evidently the wife and mother had gone 
before. Then their lips followed his in low articula- 
tion, and their eyes bent with his on the crucifix, 



TO AKD FOR AND ABOUT PARENTS. 837 

and their fingers imitated his in crossing the little 
foreheads and bosoms. It was a slow, patient, absorb- 
ing service with them ; and then they rose up and 
glided away. Our Protestant head shook somewhat, 
but the heart went out very reverently toward the 
man, and took hold of the children very tenderly. 
They were children of his and of the departed 
mother's covenant with God, and were to be brought 
up faithful and fast in the holy catholic Church. 
How wholly improbable that either girl so trained 
would ever swerve from the faith and ritual and 
spirit of the religion of their parents ! 

How slow Christian parents are to learn, that, in 
shaping character, their opportunity and power are 
nearest and next to the divine ! And, because of 
this, God puts them under this covenant obligation 
to seize the opportunity and apply the power in 
training their children. Of course the moral destiny 
of the child does not lie totally in parental hands ; 
but it lies there potentially more than in all others, 
save the divine. 

It was in 1850, that a band of Iowa emigrants, 
bound for our new Ophir, entered the South Pass, 
that continental table-land where two brooklets, in a 
quandary, run different ways ; one for the Atlantic, 
and the other for the Pacific, It is the land crest, or 
divide between the two great oceans. In a fancy as 
elevated as their position, they transferred a hunter's 
cup of water from each to the other stream, and then 
followed them in imagination and conversation in 
their exchanged destinies. With as little effort, and 
less reflection, many a child has had its destiny and 

29 



338 THE CHURCH AND HER CHILDREN. 

current changed to the other side of the continent of 
life. Well will it be for the children, and so much 
better for mankind, when parents comprehend pro- 
foundly and anxiously the fact, that the moral table- 
lands and divides in this world are very near to 
where the cradle is rocked. 

Because of this very fact, moreover, that the 
moulding forces of life lie so near to the cradle, the 
parent must never forget that they lie on a plaj^- 
ground. The early period of all higher animal life 
is a period of physical enjoyment and amusement. 
Child-life is no exception to this ; and the consecrated 
child needs to be amused, as well as instructed and 
trained. Safe social enjoyment must be provided in 
order to secure the best moral and religious results. 
The little games and sociables, and rambling recrea- 
tions, are a great aid to religion in taking possession 
of a child. 

Any pastor who has noticed how much a lamb 
frolics, just for the fun of it, must consider that the 
lambs of his flock, as belonging also to the animal 
kingdom, have like propensities, and quite as reason- 
able and as innocent. Indeed, they are constitutional 
necessities, and a wise provision should be made for 
them. The plays, as the prayers of a child, are wor- 
thy of careful parental attention ; and a. system of 
persistent negatives on juvenile indulgences will 
never furnish the recreations that childhood needs, 
and age can approbate. Great care is needed, there- 
fore, lest one hinder a healthy moral and religious 
development.^ Juvenile piety, if well started and 
proportioned, will not hush the shouting of a boy, or 



TO AND FOR AND ABOUT PARENTS. 339 

slacken his running, or shorten his kite-string. Lit- 
tle Samuel, even at Shiloh, must have had some 
childhood sports outside the tabernacle. Many an 
adult Samuel, as well as Hannah and Elkanah, pass- 
ing for sedate and devout church-members, are pleased 
with a span, and lawn, and brilliant table-service, 
which are only the adult kite and top and oar. Pos- 
sibly more fatherly and motherly attention, in the 
line of juvenile enjoyments, would have saved 
Hophni and Phinehas. With no unjust reflections 
on any Eli, ancient or modern, it might be suggested, 
that, if some good men would tremble more for the 
necessary and suitable recreations of their little ones, 
they would have less cause in old age to tremble for 
the ark of God. 



But our discussion, expanded and itemized, comes 
to its conclusion. This examination of the stones of 
Zion has been full of interest, and we confess to its 
ending with regrets. Stones so laid of God, and in 
family strata, and on which the most of the beauti- 
ful and comfortable and hopeful in this world has 
been builded, and is to be, beget a study full of the 
deepest emotions. 

Among these ancient foundations, we have found^ 
Abraham building in faith, and David in triumph- 
ant song, and Isaiah in glowing prophecy. We 
have walked about Zion with the Johns, harbinger 
and evangelist, and with the saints, Peter and Paul, 
and counted the towers thereof. Under the arches, 
and on the towers and goodly battlements, we have 



340 THE CHURCH AND HER CHILDREN". 

found IrensGus and Origen, Chrysostom and Augus- 
tine ; and our own men of yesterday, Luther and Cal- 
vin and Edwards. 

Indeed, we have been in a company of notables; 
for if we run over the catalogue of the world's 
worthies, starring the names that have given cheerful 
color and warmth to the pages of history, by the 
humanities and philanthropies and virtues of all 
higher life, we shall find that the foot-note to each 
star is, " This and that man was born in her." 



INDEX. 



A. 

Abraham, and the founding of the Church, 12. 

'* and the two covenants with, civil and religious, 13-25. 

^^ The children of; spiritual, not lineal, 20, 21. 

Alexandek and his unfortunate teacher, 331. 
^Ambrose of Milan, Testimony of, 194-197. 

" " Baptism of, 214, 215. 

Arethusa and her son Chrysostom, 335. 

Apostles, The, as related to Old and New Dispensation, 1.36-141. 
Apostolic practice equal to a command of Christ, 66, 66, 
Augustine, The baptism of, 212-214. 

'^ on infant church-membership, 295, 

" on infant baptism, 155, 175-180. 

" and his mother, 335, 336. 

B. 

Baptism and circumcision connected and contrasted, 60-64, 216- 
218, 221-229. 

" and circumcision, The different offices of, 87. 

" of female proselytes, 83, 84. 

" of households, common before Apostolic times, 136. 

" of infants among the Jews, 84. 

" of infants, Evidence of, within eighty years of Apostolic 
times, 244-256, 280. 

" of infants, if in common use will not be much mentioned 
by authors, 154-156, 171, 172, 175, 176. 

" infant; not time enough to introduce as a forgery, 168, 
169, 226-229. 

" infant. The Pelagians had great reason to deny if pos- 
sible, 172. 

29* 341 



342 INDEX. 

Baptism, infant, Many and varied early evidences of, 192, 193. 

'^ infant. Many terms or expressions for, 197, 201. 

'* infant, not mentioned by early fathers for eighty years, 
and this objection considered, 257-272. 

*' of John, what, 67-70. 

" of John no novelty, 71-79. 

*^ of proselytes by the Jews, 83-88. 

*^ Jewish and Christian discriminated, 216-219. 

" not prominent in the Kew Testament, 258. 

" would not be much discussed by early writers, 266, 267. 
Baptisms of the Jews, 71-90. 
Baptized child. The, divinely located, 297, 298. 

" child. Much expected for, of God, 298, 299. 

*' child. The regeneration of, to be expected, 299, 300. 

" children. The claim of, on the Church, 322, 323. 

'' children. The neglect of, by the Church, 301-312. 

'' children. What can the Church do for, 313-317. 

*^ children should make a distinct class, 315, 316, 323. 

^^ children should attend the preparatory lectures, 316, 317. 

" children. The ancient treatment of, 318-329. 

^' Baptized unto Moses : " what, 77-79. 
'' Baptiziistg them : " what, 99-106. 
Baptizing no novelty to the eleven, 100-106. 
Baptist theory of Abrahamic covenants, 33-36. 
Baptist theory of a second church, 26-36. 
Basil, Testimony of, 198. 

" The baptism of, 208-210. 
Biblical argument for infant baptism, Summary of, 150-153. 
BiBLiOTHECA Sacra, Theory of, on "renascuntur in Deum," 254. 
BuNSEJS" and the baptized children, .319-321. 



o. 

Candidates for the Church, and a church school for them, 323- 

329. 
Canoes, The two in Minnesota, 330, 331. 

Cakthage, Councils of: A.D. 253, pp. 221-229; A.D. 397, pp. 
188-190; A.D. 400, pp. 187, 188; A.D. 416, p. 170; A.D. 418, 
p. 171. 
Catechumens, Ancient treatment of, by the Church, 286-288. 
" The ancient, and should be restored, 323-329. 



INDEX. 343 

Childeen and their amusements, 338, 339. 

^' Are the rights of, infringed by baptism, 289-291. 

" baptized, The position of, in the Church, 297-300. 

** baptized, Kelations of, to the Church, 282-296. 

" have no hfe separable from family life, 43-47. 

" if omitted from first Christian Church, would occasion 

great disputes, 139. 
** if not omitted, little would be said of them, 143. 
" included in ancient covenants of God, 40-42. 
" Little provision for, in church service, 303-307. 
" members of the Church before Christ, 138. 
** Modern treatment of, 288-291. 

" of the Church, The. Who have they been, 339, 340. 
" Objections to baptizing, considered, 107-124, 142, 143. 
" Relations of, unchanged in change from Jewish to 

Christian Dispensation, 131-135. 
" The, and Christ, 125-130. 

*^ The, should be secured in public worship, 315-317. 
" Will the apostles baptize, 102-106. 
Christ, The silence of, on infant church-membership, 131-135. 
Christian Review of Abrahamic covenant, 33-36. 

" scholars few in the second century, 260-262. 

'^ writings, The few that remain from the second cen- 

tury, 266. 
Chbysostom and his mother, 335. 
" Baptism of, 210, 211. 

" Testimony of, 182-186. 

Chubch, Additions to, in apostolic age by families, 293. 
" Members of, originally, 40-42. 
" Double basis of, 43-47. 
" member, Can an infant be, 301, 302 
" No second, 48-58 ; 136-138. 
" Strange conception of a, 32, 33. 
** The, an organized body, 4. 
" The, before Abraham, 1. 
V* The constitution of, divine, 10-12. 
" The constitution of, not open to amendment, 282-286.. 
" The, first organized with Abraham, 10. 
'' The, formed with a village, 13. 
" The, founded on famihes, 292. 
'* ' The increase of, till lately, by families, 293-296. 
" The, has different phases, though one, 59. 



344 INDEX. 

CHxmcH, The names of, in Old Testament, 2. 

^' The names of, transferred to the ISTew Testament, 3, 56, 58. 

** The, not identical with Jewish nation, 5. 

" The, one and universal, 6-9. 

" The propagating power of, in the children, 298. 

'' The, should educate her children as the state does, 309. 

" Theory of a second, 26-36. 

" visible. When organized, 10-25. ^ 

" What can the, do for her children, 313-329. 
Chitkch -School for candidates, Need of, 323-329. 
Circumcision and baptism serve the same end, 59-66. 

'^ Introduction of, 22-25. 

Clemexs Alexa]n^deinus' use of '^ regeneration" and baptism as 

synonyms, 249, 250. 
Clemeis^s Komanus, Introductory Note. 
CcELESTius, Testimony of, 169, 170. 
Commands of Christ not all recorded, 64. 
Constitutions, Apostolic, Introductory Note. 
Covenant with Abraham twofold, 13-25. 
'^ with Abraham national, 13-17. 

'^ with Abraham spiritual, 17-25. 

Covenants with Abraham 23 years apart, 17, 18. 

" " '' Another view of, 33-36. 

Creed of church very simple, 11, 12 ; substance of, 37-39. 
Creeds, strange use of, 283-285. 
Cyprian's letter to Fidus, 221-229. 
Cyprian on infant church-membership, 294, 295. 

" on oneness of church, 55. 
Cyprian's use of baptism and regeneration synonymously, 252, 

253. 
Cyril's Twenty-Three Lectures to the catechumens, 319. 

D. 

Danzius on infant baptism, 89. 

DiospoLis, Council of, 167. 

DoNATiSTS The and infant baptism, 177-179. 

E. 

EccLESTA, the same in Old and New Testament, 56-58. 
Edwards, Jonathan, and Christian children, 325. 



INDEX. 845 

Eliberis, Council of, Introductory Note. 
Elvira, Council of, A.D. 305, pp. 219-220. 

F. 

Family, Tlie, a unit, 40-47, 291, 292. 

^^ The element indispensable in cliurch organization, 43-47. 
Fathers, The works of lost, 262-266. 

Females anciently reckoned with the males in covenants, 42. 
FiDus, and his question to sixty-five bishops, 221-229. 

G. 

Geni^^adius on infant church-membership, 295, 296. 
Gentiles, added to the church by families, 292, 293. 
Gregory Nazianzen, The baptism of, 211, 212. 

" '' The testimony of, 200-206. 

" " and his mother, 334, 335. 

H. 

Hermas, Introductory Note. 
Hippo Regius, Council of, A. D. 393, p. 190 
HiPPOLYTUS, Biinsen's, quoted, 319-321. 
Historical argument opened, 154-161. 

•' argument. Summary of, 276-281. 

Hovey, Rev. A., D.D., and theory of a second church, 26, 27. 
Household : does the word imply children, 144^149. 

" baptism, 142-149. 

I.. 

Infant baptism has no regenerating force, 311, 312. 

^' " why neglected, 311. 

Infant church-members. Difficulty in treating, 303-312. 
Infant church-membership. Testimony of Augustine on, 295. 

" " '' oi Cyprian on, 294, 295. 

" * " " '' of Gennadius on, 295, 296. 

" " ** should be thoroughly recognized by 

the Church, 300. 
Innocent, Testimony of, 181, 182. 
Iowa emigrants and the two cups of water, 337, 338. 
Iren^us, and his phrase, ^^ regenerated unto God," 244-256. 
IvSiDORE of Pelusium, Testimony of, 158, 159. 



846 INDEX. 

J. 

Jerome, Testimony of, 159-60 ; baptism of, 214. 
Jewish baptisms, 71-90. 

*' nation not the Chureli, 5, 6. 

" nation and the Church, started 400 years apart, 13, 14. 

" nation and the Church, Difference between, 19-25, 30-32. 

'' use of ^'regeneration," " new birth," &c., 245-247. 
Jews, The expectation of, when John came, 67-70. 
John the Baptist, first appearance of, 67, 68. 
Julian, Testimony of, 170. 

Justin Martyr's use of ''■ regeneration " for baptism, 248. 
Juvenile Theology, A department for, needed in seminaries, 304. 

K. 

" Kingdom of heaven " what, 125-130, 308. 

L. 

LlGHTFOOT, 82. 

Lord's Day and Supper as httle mentioned as baptism by early 

writers, 267, 268. 
Lost works of the Fathers, 262-266. 

M. 

Maimonides, 82. 

MiLEVis, Council of, 170. 

Milton on the destruction of books, 265. 

Monica and her son Augustine, 335, 336. 

Mothers, The influence of, 334-336. 

Neander on the origin of the Church, 22, note, 

'' The theory of, against his facts on infant baptism, 236, 

242. 

" and the influence of mothers, 334-336. 

Neander, on delaying baptism, 204. 
Nectarius, baptism of, 209, 210. 
Neoc^sarea, Council of, A.D. 314, Singular question before, 

216-219. 
'' New birth" &c.. Origin of, in the New Testament, 247. 
Nona and her son Gregory, 334, 335. 



INDEX. 347 

o. 

Objections considered, 107-124. 

" Baptism a seal of personal piety only, 111-113. 

" Command to baptize only believers, 107-109. 

" Includes females, as circumcision did not, 117-124. 

" No command to baptize children, 109-111, 142, 143. 

" Takes ^way the privilege of a personal prof ession of 

rehgion, 113-116. 

" That leading Fathers in the Church were not baptized 

in infancy, 208-215. 

" The infant does not consent to it, 112, 113. 

"Of such is the kingdom of heaven," import of, 125-130. 
OiKoc, and Okta, meaning of, 147. 
Old Testament, rejection of, as authority for church organization, 

26-29. 
Optatus of Mileve, testimony of, 206, 207. 
Oeigen, and his parents' influence over, 334. 

" The testimony of, 230-236. 
Okigen's use of regeneration and baptism, as synonyms, 251. 
Oeiginal sin, Pelagius' view of, 163, 164. 

P. 

Pagan destruction of Christian histories, 264. 

Paeents, and amusements for their children, 338, 339. 

" Little interest of, in infant baptism, and why, 331-333. 
" Things said herein to and for and about, 330-340. 

Patkiaechs and Prophets, Were the church-members, 29, 30. 

Pelagian controversy and infant baptism, 162-174. 

" question before seven councils, yet infant baptism not 

denied, when denial would avail so much, 173. 

Peshito translation of New Testament, and "household," 148. 

Preaching should be. more for the children, 313-315. 

Pkess, the fruitfulness of, in the nineteenth as compared with sec- 
ond century, 259, 260. 

Peince Albert and his device, 300, 307. 

Peoselyte baptism, 71-90. 



Q. 

Quebec, and the orphan girls, 336. 



848 INDEX. 

E. 

Rabbies, authority of, 91-98. 

** Renascuntub in Deum," The, of Irenasus, 244-256. 

s. 

Sabbath school as related to the Church, 287, 289, 309-311, 321. 
Selben on origin of baptisms, 89. 
Septuagint, Origin of, 72, 73. 

" Uses of, 56-58, 73, 74. 

Silence of history on infant baptism considered, 257-272. 

" of the Jews on infant baptism, 273-275. 

SiRicius, Testimony of, 190- 192. 
Spencek on origin of baptism with Jews, 89. 
Syjriac, or Peshito, on "household,'' 148. 

T. 

Tacitus on destruction of books, 265, note, 
Talmuds, Origin of, 80, 81. 

" Authority of, 91-98. 

Taylor, C, on "household," 147. 
Tertullian, The testimony of, 237-243. 
Tertullian's use of "regeneration" for baptism, 250, 251. 
Theodoret of Mesopotamia, Testimony of, 157, 158. 
Tucker, The Rev. J. T., and his treatise, 306, 307. 

Y. 

YiNCENT of Lerins, Testimony of, 156, 157. 

w. 

Woman, The new position of, under the New Dispensation, 
explained, 117-123. 

X. 

Xavier and the children, 306. 



